Pressroom Panacea?

Ultimately, improvements in water-based flexo may be UV's greatest hurdle. As Gallus' Yates states, "For general consumable packages, with paper labels, cost is critical, and you can do a good job with water-based flexo."

The UV flexo process holds its own, however, in several segments of package printing. Yates predicts, "It will continue to grow, because films are becoming more competitive in price, and are growing in demand." Little has observed a lot of UV flexo work involved in the production of the no-label look and other films.