Industry News

In recent years, driven by the growing awareness of environmental protection, flexo printing machines have become the preferred choice for packaging printing in industries such as food, industry, pharmaceuticals, and retail. Popular products such as baking paper, chocolate wrapping paper, fruits wrapping paper, and lollipop wrapping paper are largely printed using flexographic printing machines. So, why do manufacturers prefer flexo printing machines? This article will detail five reasons: thin substrate adaptability, food-safe inks, efficient high-volume production, cost advantages, and multi-process integration.

Central Drum Type Flexo Press for Air Fryer Paper

Thin Substrate Adaptability

Food wrapping paper, such as hamburger wrapping paper, tea wrapping paper, coffee bean wrapping paper and biscuit wrapping paper, is typically made from food-grade, low-weight coated paper, silicone-coated paper, or greaseproof paper. Low-weight coated paper typically weighs less than 40g/㎡. Greaseproof paper has a wider range of weights, commonly ranging from 28-100g/㎡, while silicone-coated paper (such as for baking) typically weighs 40-60g/㎡. Flexographic printing uses light pressure, typically between 1-3kg/cm² (approximately 10-30N/cm), making it ideal for printing on this thin and easily deformable substrate without damaging it.

Stack Type Flexographic Press for Toast Wrapping Paper

Food-Safe Inks

Biscuit packaging paper boxes, cake wrapping paper, nut wrapping paper and similar materials, being packaging materials in direct contact with food, must ensure material safety, migration safety and hygienic safety. Flexographic printing machines typically employ water-based inks. Water-based inks use water as the core dispersion medium, are free of toxic and hazardous solvents, are environmentally friendly, and have low odor. They meet the safety requirements of "no migration and no pollution" for food packaging materials and are a mainstream ink type for food packaging printing.

Central Impression Flexo Printer for Hot Dog Wrapping Paper

Efficient High-Volume Production

Everyone's life relies on consumables such as butter wrapping paper, French fry wrapping paper, vegetables wrapping paper and food tray liner paper. Consequently, their substantial consumption drives correspondingly high demand. This places greater demands on manufacturers' production equipment for efficiency. Flexographic printing presses offer a high degree of automation, minimal human intervention, and high speeds. They can produce large batches simultaneously while ensuring high print quality, making them ideal for the fast food industry's demands for both speed and volume.

Stacking Type Flexographic Printer for Pizza Wrapping Paper

Cost Advantages

The cost advantages of flexographic presses are primarily reflected in two aspects: plate costs and ink costs. The photopolymer flexible plates used in flexo printing incur a per-sheet cost that is merely 1.2 to 1.5 times that of offset lithography PS plates. These plates can be reused (capable of printing 100, 000 to 500, 000 impressions under normal conditions) and feature rapid plate-making speeds, making them ideal for repeated production of identical designs (such as brand logos). For large orders of single-design items like coffee paper cups or barbecue paper, this offers excellent value for money.

CI Type Flexography Machine for Candy Wrapping Paper

Multi-Process Integration

The flexographic printing press integrates printing and post-press processing, thereby reducing material handling between multiple stages and minimising material wastage. This approach saves time while simultaneously lowering production costs.

Printing + Slitting/Die-Cutting

After printing, substrates such as paper, paper containers, and films can be directly die-cut and slit by the flexographic printing press's optional die-cutting and slitting units. This is particularly suitable for products such as milk tea paper cups, candy packaging paper box and bread wrapping paper.

Printing + Lamination/Gloss Coating

Substrates such as wedding candy paper bags and luxury paper bags undergo lamination or gloss coating after printing. This not only protects the printed designs but also enhances the product's overall texture and quality.

Printing + Foil Stamping

Applying foil stamping in specific areas of printed designs imparts a metallic visual effect, lending products a more premium and sophisticated appearance. This post-press technique is particularly suited to high-end label production lines, such as wine packaging stickers, cigarette paper, jewellery boxes, dried fruit wrapping paper and coffee bean wrapping paper.

Stacked Type Flexographic Machine for Sandwich Wrapping Paper

Flexographic printing machines demonstrate unparalleled advantages over other printing presses across five key areas: adaptability to thin substrates, food-safe inks, high-efficiency mass production, cost-effectiveness, and multi-process integration. They are highly favoured by manufacturers on production lines for products such as fried chicken wrapping paper, instant noodles wrapping paper, and cookies wrapping paper. In the future, Mengji will invest more costs, time and energy to innovate and develop more high-end and affordable flexographic printing machines, and contribute to the brand building of various manufacturers.