Flexography Adds Sustainability in Packaging Printing

By Ratanaporn B. Jakobsen

During the last decades the general increase of the world population life standards accelerated growth in the consumer goods production and, consequently, in the packaging and labelling of goods.
 

The Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies need to serve consumers quickly, safely and efficiently with the most sustainable solutions. These companies are pushing to maximize their positive impact and minimise any negative carbon footprint on the environment. Packaging strategies are often re-assessed to analyse their contribution to this overall impact.

Packaging is usually viewed by consumers and media as a stand-alone product. This ignores its fundamental role, which is to protect, distribute and display goods. Without packaging food rots, fragile products get broken and distribution becomes hazardous, with the result that the entire supply chain becomes hugely inefficient. According to an ECR Europe study, in Western Europe at most 3% of food spoils before it reaches the consumer. This percentage increases up to 50% in the developing countries.

Similar consideration could be done also for other consumer goods. Packaging makes a major contribution to this prevention of waste and, in line with this purpose, it is fundamental to produce "sustainable" packaging to help in preserving the environment. The production of packaging, with a low environmental impact, is today a need and a challenge as it has to remain attractive and consistent with brand concept and image as well as the retailer's store image while minimizing its environmental impact.

Flexography printing process replies to the demand in sustainable packaging
Some market segments have been even more dedicated to the conversion to flexography for flexible packaging, for example dairy products, cheeses and grocery. They recognize that flexo has a strong advantage in terms of cost, time to market and flexibility for a printing quality which has been improving during the last recent years. "The flexographic process is very well adapted to our need, thanks to the ability to produce small printing orders at a competitive price level and with a visual impact which is closer and closer to rotogravure", says Mickaël Margot, Sourcing Manager at Alpina Savoie.

Even today, flexography has winning role in being a printing technology that very well suits the sustainable demand of FMCGs, brand owners, private labels and retailers."Thanks to Flexography and to Cyrel FAST process", says Julien Ivars, Packaging Purchasing Manager at Entremont, "we have 3 key benefits: cost savings, more flexibility for our industrial process and positive impact for our sustainable development policy: a project of more than 900 Tons CO² equivalent savings".

A sustainable packaging cannot be considered an ending point on its own. It is the outcome of a full sustainable processes integration, equipments and materials involved from the design to the final printed package good. In 2010, DuPont Packaging Graphics, one of the key members of flexo4all alliance, ran an updated Life Cycle Assessment aimed to measure the environmental benefits of using thermal technology during the flexographic plate-making process compared to the traditional solvent process.

Compared to the original Life Cycle Assessment from September 2008, the objective of this update was to use data from a long-term continuous operation of a tradeshop installation. The new data collection focused on equipment electricity used over an extended period of time, which included idle time. DuPont was very demanding on methodology in order to measure energy consumption and emissions which most accurately match the veracity of the today tradeshops. The updated results validated the findings of the original study. For plate processing, digital thermal (with PET developer material) has a 63% lower non-renewable energy consumption and 52% lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to digital solvent plate imaging process for a 0.067 plate (1.70 mm thickness).

The thermal plate-making process is a dry system which does not use solvents and brushes to process photopolymer plates. This brings the overall process to take between 30 to 45 minutes whereas a solvent plate-making lasts typically from 3 to 4 hours. Since solvent is eliminated, the thermal plate-making process eliminates also all steps directly related to solvents, like manufacturing, transportation, storage, distillation and recovery of solvent. This reduction has an impressive benefit on energy consumption of the trade shop working configuration.

As we are speaking about sustainability, there's also a direct positive impact to the human health. Indeed, there is no need to manipulate and smell solvents and operators are working in much favourable environment, which consequently increase worker's productivity and therefore the tradeshop's profitability. Within the PrePress room, plates imaging is another key step where the flexo process shows advantages in quality achievements and in sustainability. Here the direct digital plate-making allows to produce printing plates with no manual lamination and thus there is no film to dispose of once the plates have been imaged. Digital flexo plates bring presses faster up to colour and also stability is higher. This means start up and other waste due to testing and bringing the colours up are reduced.

eBeam curing ink...a new way for a Sustainability printing?
EB technology is widely used in the pharmaceutical industry to dry medicines and in the sterilization of milk and medical instruments. EB is a perfectly safe technology already used by the litho printing industry since the 1960s. The effectively instantaneous cure gives the printer the ability to post-process or ship immediately as the stock come off the press shortening the time to market. This ability to respond quickly and not have lag time and inventory problems are additional financial and process management advantage of EB curing. EB Flexo inks do not have the disadvantage of requiring any photo-initiator, such as those needed in UV printing which also requires several degrees of post curing. In EB curing, a curtain of accelerated electrons is emitted towards the web in an evacuated chamber. When the energized electrons hit ink or coating, the curing process happens instantaneously, without the need for a photo-initiator.

The EB process is conducted under an inert nitrogen blanket. The air that we breathe contains 78% nitrogen but is not pure enough as the oxygen in the air inhibits the curing process and results in the generation of ozone. As the flexible packaging market continues to grow, the focus will shift to predominantly shorter run lengths due to shorter time to market, smaller pack quantities and a migration of paper based packaging to film and foils. This shift will be accompanied by increasing change-overs per day and lower production up-time as an inevitable result. In spite of these pressures, flexo printing must meet gravure quality and even offset standards. Because energy curable inks do not contain any diluents and are pure 100% ink, evaporation plays no part in the curing process, resulting in clean and sharp dots and optical densities far better than solvent-based or water-based inks. EB Flexo inks fulfil the requirement of increasing the quality up to 70 l/cm and they generate no odour caused by photo-initiators (PI).

Superior print quality is one of only many advantages in Electron Beam curing, EB curable ink consumption is less than half that of solvent based printing, as no solvents or water have to evaporate and no additional solvents have to be added during production, saving substantial amounts of additional solvents. Additionally, the enormous energy consumption of hot air dryers, incinerators and VOC abatements do not play a part in the EB curing process. Due to current and future environmental regulation, carbon footprint reporting and reduction are expected to become dominant issues in the packaging industry as their cost factors increase. The EB Flexo environmental benefits, print quality, reduced waste and cost reduction are welcome news to an industry facing increasing regulatory and competitive pressure.

ABOUT FLEXO4ALL
Flexo4All is a strategic cooperation which combines worldwide expertise from independent companies; suppliers of the graphic arts and packaging printing industry. Born to be a strategic cooperation and not a commercial joint venture to sell complementary products or services Flexo4All aims at:
•Encouraging networking within the flexo industry to create active co-operation among all partners;
•Connecting the competence of all members to deliver knowledge and added value solutions worldwide;
•Promoting the value of flexography as the best technology to satisfy all printing needs;
•Achieving improved and sustainable service for the Flexographic Packaging Printing industry.

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