UK folding carton manufacturer Benson Group has installed Dantex coating plate production equipment at its Gateshead food packaging factory.
Previously, the site used a mix of its own hand prepared cut-out blankets and plates provided by an external supplier. The new Aquaflex 900F plate processor utilises an environmentally-friendly washing process to provide "the greenest solution to coating plate creation currently available". Plates are originated by producing a negative image on a standard Epson inkjet device, which is driven by specialist RIP software.
The negative is exposed onto the Flexo NVO 114 Aquaflex Varnica water wash coating plate, via a regular exposure frame before being processed through the Aquaflex 900F. A dry, ready to run plate can be created in approximately 40min using this state-of-the-art system. Older solvent-based plate production systems could take over two hours in the drying process alone for one plate.
Lee Appleby, Benson's operations manager for the North East, comments: "This system gives us a tremendous advantage in terms of the time it takes to create a plate for the coating unit. With our customers having ever more demanding delivery schedules it is a significant benefit to have control over the production of this part of the process. The plates produced are also highly durable - we have already had one running in excess of one million impressions - and produce excellent, consistent quality on the run."
