Flint Group focuses on low migration UV LED

Addressing a press conference at Labelexpo Europe today, Guillaume Clement, VP Flint Group Narrow Web said the company sees a strong trend towards short-run production of flexible packaging, shrink sleeves, laminated tubes on mid-web presses using low migration UV inks.

Figures collected by Flint show flexible packaging runs have contracted by 17 percent since 2015, while in Europe some 23 percent of label converters are already producing flexible packaging.

At the same time Flint’s research shows 24 percent of brand owners already mandate ‘compliant’ packaging and labels, expected to almost double in the next 2-3 years.

Along with its core labels inks business - also pushing towards low migration UV LED - this is driving Flint’s future investment strategy, with Clement announcing a US global innovation centre, a  service centre in South Korea and capacity investment at the Swedish mother plant, where the company has a specialized low migration testing facility. The first low migration UV LED inks are expected to be commercially available in 2018.

Clement also announced a new remote color management system called Vivo Colour. ‘Our feedback is that our customers do not always have the competence to color match and it is a cause of downtime which can be up to 2.5 hours a day.’ 

Converters send samples to Flint’s ‘data warehouse’ where a search returns a color match to a low delta - all within 10-15 minutes. Vivo will be rolled out in EMEA in 2018 with ROW to follow. 

Flint Group’s other labels and packaging-related business areas also had announcements to make. The plates division introduced the Nyloflex Xpress thermal processing system along with a dedicated plate and  developer portfolio. 

Letterpress continues to be a research focus, with the new water-washable Nyloprint WF Sharp digital plate launched.

New Rotec ‘Smart’ and ‘Smart Premium’ sleeves were shown with a new inner core which reduces weight by 15 percent and an additional barrier layer for superior dimensional stability. 

With Thermoflexx now part of the Flint portfolio, the division introduced the FlexTray plate handling system for the flexo CTP imager, as well as an automation package which adds connectivity to plate exposing systems, auto resolution switching and automatic calibration. 

Effectively this combination allows hands-free plate handling - ‘you just remove the cover sheet, select the job and the plate is automatically loaded and imaging start automatically.