At first sight, specializing in the impossible doesn’t look like the best way to build a profitable long-term business. For Pennsylvania-based prepress house Imageworx, however, it’s a strategy that has proved highly successful for more than two decades.

Köstlin Prepress Services of Ditzingen, near Stuttgart in south-west Germany, recently added Miraclon’s KODAK FLEXCEL NX Ultra Solution to their range of flexo platemaking technologies for high quality packaging printing.

In May last year the senior management at Italian packaging prepress company Z Due travelled to Istanbul for the awards ceremony of the first Global Flexo Innovation Awards. They returned with much more than a Gold Award, because in the space of a few days the Modena-based business, along with fellow award-winner Reproflex3, from the UK, laid the foundation of a collaboration that has already yielded significant benefits to both companies.

Since it was founded in 1969 in Verona by Giulio Storace, through a combination of vision and innovation, Fotolito Veneta has grown to become one of the leading packaging businesses in Italy – though it counts Europe as its domestic market and is able to guarantee next day delivery of its flexo plates to countries such as Britain, Poland, Greece and Spain.

Miraclon today announces that the Global Flexo Innovation Awards – to honor businesses that are pioneering the transformation of the flexo industry – are open for submissions from companies wishing to be recognized for their exciting, creative and innovative commercial packaging projects printed using KODAK FLEXCEL NX Plates.

“From a procurement perspective — and even a supply perspective — flexo is winning. When one of the really large brands switches to flexo, the world will shift.” Andrew Hewitson, co-founder and business development director of UK flexo prepress house Reproflex3, is talking about an approaching tipping-point when he confidently expects the flexo process to […]

The judges for this year’s Global Flexo Innovation Awards, hosted by Miraclon, have been announced. The panel comprises eight flexo industry influencers and technical experts who bring vast experience from every segment of the flexographic value chain. Each judge’s area of expertise offers a unique take on the judging criteria, which will mark each entrant against their show-stopping creativity, transition to flexo from another print process, print production workflow efficiency and commitment to sustainable print.

Miraclon is pleased to announce the appointment of Stephen McCartney as Commercial Director for EAMER. In his role, Stephen will manage the commercial team in the region with a focus on supporting growth in the strategic market segments for Miraclon.

“We’re not afraid to challenge our clients. For us, it’s a really important part of building and maintaining a relationship — it’s how we discover new ways of working.” The speaker is Chris Rigby, the business he’s talking about is Pulse Media, and the Stockport, UK-based company has collected a Silver Award in the Global Flexo Innovation Awards by Miraclon last year, recognised for workflow efficiency and offset-to-flexo process conversion.

Miraclon has partnered with DigiPrint Technologies, a Pakistani technology solutions provider for the print and packaging industries. DigiPrint, which is based in Islamabad, will be Miraclon’s local distribution partner; responsible for developing and implementing the sales and marketing of Miraclon’s products throughout Pakistan.

As flexo gains a bigger share of the flexible packaging market at the expense of gravure, the confidence behind the process keeps growing. At Colombian flexible packaging converter Plastilene, it’s fair to say that confidence is sky-high — witness this comment from General Manager Belinda Duran: “I say to people, ‘Do you see something we can’t do with flexo? Because I don’t.’”

An anniversary is a time for reflection: a time to pause, look back, and see how far we’ve come. Steurs Graphic Solutions can look back a long way — 70 years, to 1949, when the two Steurs brothers started what has become one of Belgium’s leading packaging prepress houses. The backward look will be a short one, however, because all eyes at the Antwerp-based business are firmly fixed on the present and the future — “on continuing to create solutions for today and tomorrow”, as the company’s tagline has it.