New flexo plates passes test at Moscow tradeshop Upackgraphica and packaging industry enterprise Nordenia Slavnika.

In early 2007 DuPont Packaging Graphics announced the launch of a new product for the Russian packaging printing market,  the DuPont™ Cyrel® DPR digital solvent flexo plate.  Created to achieve maximum printing quality in all segments of the packaging industry. Cyrel® DPR performs with a wide range of packaging materials and inks.

A key advantage of the product is that the flexo plate remains clean for a longer time during the printing process because the screen elements are less “clogged” by ink during printing so the operator needs to clean plate less often.   The DPR plate enhances productivity by reducing printing press idle time and by increasing print run length of the plate due lower exposure to the chemical and physical impacts of cleaning.

The specialists of the Moscow tradeshop Upakgraphica agreed to produce a set of printing plates using Cyrel DPR to test. the new product in the working conditions of the Russian packaging industry.  Upakgraphica is a large modern enterprise equipped with the latest production technolgoy. It is a member of the UPAK group and offers a broad range of services from creating a packaging design to production of printing plates. Upakgraphica works with many of Russia’s best known packaging manufactures.

Upakgraphica chose an order from Nordenia Slavnika, one of the largest Russian manufacturers of packaging films, for the testing. Nordenia Slavnika produces multi-layer packaging films for food, hygiene and everyday chemistry products. The most modern equipment is installed at Nordenia Slavnika plant.        

Vadim Zotin, the technologist of Upakgraphica, says: "We learned about the DPR plate at the DuPont seminar held in May of this year and agreed to test it at our production facility because there were very encouraging promises regarding it's long print run capabilities. And actually the plates showed themselves very well at out customer's site. As was promised, the plates required cleaning less often and provided a considerably higher print run than we normally see." 

Michail Yakimov, the chief technologist of Nordenia Slavnika says: "With DuPont™ Cyrel® DPR plates we printed the label order for a big Russian manufacturer of mineral water. That job was very complicated from the point of view of prepress level and printing performance requirements – there are clouds in the design consisting of two white inks. During the test, the DPR plates stood 60 – 65 thousand of meters of printed film without cleaning and with high print quality. The calculation of time saved showed 80 minutes – that means 15 - 20 % of the whole printing time. This proved some tangible economic benefits of using Cyrel DPR."

The DPR plates also have high exposure resolution, resulting in better quality reproduction on press. The plates provide excellent tonal range and printing uniformity across the web. The polymer is ozone and white light resistant so the printing plate can be stored for a long time.   

"Summer and autumn are very busy seasons for us so we will not have time to print and laminate other tests for presses,” Michail Yakimov continues, “But I believe that we'll start using DPR plates at the end of this year or at beginning of the next year. For us DuPont is the incontestable leader in  flexographic technologies and we are satisfied with its new product."