Benchmarking and Worldwide Market Trends for Flexographic Printing

Flexible packaging is another high quality, high growth area for this print process, whereas rotogravure is slowly declining. To quote the study, “In no other flexo sector does the converted product have to perform like in the flexible packaging marketplace. The package must decorate, convey, contain, preserve, protect and provide optimum functionality.” As a result, like the tag and label market, due to customer demand, the number of colors has increased for flexo printed flexible packaging, and line screen values are trending upwards with values of 133 lpi or higher. These quality improvements, along with decreasing run lengths and lower costs, give flexography the upper hand over rotogravure, which once was the dominant process for flexible packaging. On a global scale flexo dominates the flexible packaging sector with over 64% of the market share.