FTA Awards: Flexo print takes a bow

The Flexographic Technical Association recognized 73 entries as highlights of quality printing in its 2008 Excellence in Flexography Awards competition last month.

The winning companies accepted a total of 147 prizes, among them 50 gold medals, 49 silver medals, 42 bronze medals, plus six special achievement awards. The winners were announced during the Foundation of FTA (FFTA) 2008 Annual Forum in Dallas. The winning work was chosen after almost 650 print samples were sorted, reviewed, and ranked according to the challenges undertaken and the printers' abilities to master them. 

Best of the Best

Six Best of Show winners are of particular significance among the converted-product categories:

Folding Carton: Kellogg's® Croco Pops™ Jumbos carton by FTA South Africa on Behalf Of Golden Era Group.

Combined Corrugated: World Class Apples-Hand Selected Taste The Variety™ box by Allpak Container, Inc.

Preprinted Linerboard: Miller Lite Easy Chill™ 24-16 oz bottle case by SCI.

Wide Web: Malta Cleyton® Triple Corona® New Generation® NG by Coating Excellence International LLC.

Mid Web: Jergens® Skincare Tri- Pack by Label Technology, Inc.

Narrow Web: Nestle® Hot Chocolate label by FTA South Africa on Behalf of Roll On Labels, Ltd.

Judge Tim Northrop of Innovative Folding Carton applauded the highlights of the (A) Kellogg's Croco Pops Jumbos entry. “For water-based printing, this item showed extremely good coverage with crisp, clean printing and excellent dot reproduction. The color just popped off of this carton.”

Printed in four-color process with a varnish on an in-line Bobst press, the Jumbos carton used video-mounted, 0.045-in. analog photopolymer plates and water-based and UV inks in a doctor-bladed system. Press speeds of 475 fpm yielded 133-lpi screens.

Bob Cantu of Sun Chemical, a corrugated/preprint judge, commented on the (B) World Class Apples box. “There's no washboarding at all, and this is B-flute. Not to mention there's good resolution. It's got a UV coating on it, which is real nice. This would win over the preprint jobs we've seen.” He added that the detail was so vivid and well-printed that it appeared to be edible.”

Wood background images were converted from CMYK to two spot colors (Hartman dark brown and PMS 451 brown) to minimize fluting and color-shift issues (especially in highlight areas) and to allow the four-color process-build fruit images to be independent when making process adjustments. The customer's original fruit images tended toward over-saturation and darkness. Images were color-adjusted at Allpak to provide overall balance, nuance in shadow areas, and to make best use of the available color gamut on the Martin DRO press.

The Apples corrugated case employed Printron 0.115-in. analog photopolymer plates with 85- and 65-lpi screens and water-based and UV inks.

Using 0.045-in. digital-photopolymer plates from Anderson & Vreeland and prepared by Southern Graphic Systems, the (C) Miller Lite Easy Chill bottle case was printed on an 87-in.-wide Cobden Chadwick central-impression flexo press. Doctor-bladed, water-based inks in Miller's five proprietary colors plus process black and a double hit of varnish were applied in a 120-line screen at 395 fpm.

Of the preprint winner, George Salloum of Interstate Container LLC, a corrugated/preprint judge, said, “It's harder to keep the blue on the Miller Lite Easy Chill case clean. You can hide a lot in the graphics of some more complex jobs. A challenging design with net-fit imagery and screens running down to zero.”

Judge Dwayne Corimer of PolyCello, admired the Wide-Web entry: (D) Malta Cleyton® Triple Corona® New Generation® NG. “It's water-based, which is different and difficult for wide-web film. The tonal range was excellent. The black is all process, and it's an excellent match to the proof.”

The winner of this award, Coating Excellence Intl., asked that all details of the printing process for the horsefeed multiwall bag be kept confidential.

With electronic prepress systems creating 0.067-in. DuPont Cyrel® digital-photopolymer plates, the (E) Jergens Skincare Tri-Pack was printed with four-color and spot blue water-based inks plus a UV varnish. The converter's PCMC doctor-bladed, in-line press ran at 350 fpm with a 175-line screen.

“The Jergens job had awesome flesh tones, great metallic ink simulation,” said Dan Dietrich of Schawk, Inc., mid-web and also folding-carton judge. Judges concurred that the fleshtones, vignettes, process text, tight register, and an unstable substrate made this one “very tough.”

For the (F) Nestle Hot Chocolate 25kg foodservice-packaging label, ACME Graphics provided initial electronic art to produce 0.045-in. analog photopolymer plates for this narrow-web project. An in-line, doctor-bladed Multi Print Systems (Netherlands) ran four-color process UV inks at 390 fpm with a 155-line screen.

Narrow-web judge Barry Thompson of R.R. Donnelly was impressed by the smooth transitions in the Nestle label. “The highlights are really clean and the printer does not have build-up in there. It's an excellent demonstration of process control. The printer didn't give itself any leeway.”