Comparing with gravure printing, flexographic printing is much more eco-friendly. Its plates and inks are all closed into the printing machine, which means it could reduce the VOCS emission and make it more convenient to collect the solvent gas-these solvent could be recycle and re-used. Flexographic printing is suitable for printing materials that are relatively easy to deform, such as PE film, breathable film, some kind of relatively easy to stretch shrink film and paper. These are the advantages of flexographic printing.
Regarding to the printing layer, if the clients are going to select some material which is not are relatively easy to deform, such as OPP and PET as the printing layer, we would recommend gravure printing instead of flexographic printing. Flexographic printing is not the perfect options for these kinds of material. However, regarding to printing PE, flexography would be the better choice, because its printing speed is faster than gravure printing, the machine could speed up to more than 200m/mins. Also, for the color trapping, the flexography is better than the rotogravure printing, because the distance of each cylinder is much closer than the gravure printing, and this is the reason why flexography could run faster than the other one.
As we all know, sustainability developing has become the direction of plastic products. Nowadays more and more brand and customers are telling their needs for the sustainable products. As one of the flexible packaging production process, printing plays and important part of the sustainability-we must use the eco-friendly ink which could cut down the VOCS emission.
At first, people would choose the gravure printing because of its vivid printing ability. Today, we can see that the printing effect of flexographic printing is becoming better and better. The flexographic printing will become more and more popular in the future.