Knowledge, Innovation, Technology, and Exploration

FlexoKITE is a workshop, press floor, seminar series, and tradeshow rolled into one robust flexo user experience.  The flexo technical center runs a fully integrated workflow including the latest flexo equipment and can take a converter completely through the flexo process: from design idea through the finished printed label.

FlexoKITE can offer live dedicated training or support to visitors at the state-of-the-art Apex facility in Nashik India or remotely through web links and webinars ensuring that all locations can benefit from the opportunity.

Knowledge, Innovation, Technology, and Exploration (KITE) are the driving forces that unify flexo industry leaders to deliver real-world technical content not limited to a single product area. FlexoKITE’s holistic problem-solving structure thoroughly addresses each flexo webinar topic:

  • Problem definition;
  • Highlight the consequences of the issue in production;
  • Identify the root cause of problem;
  • Understand the costs associated with the problem;
  • Demonstrate the possible solutions to eliminate the problem;
  • Highlight the implications that the current solutions may have on press performance and efficiency;
  • Presentation of the required steps and contacts to solve the problem

Delivering the Goods — with Something for Everyone

As FlexoKITE ramped up its webinar series in 2021, attendees requested the possibility of live print testing with real files. With software, platemaking, and press available on-site, FlexoKITE collaborators are spinning up workflows to enable attendees to submit challenging designs for screening, plate, and print. Samples of print runs, or plates, can be shipped to printers or attendee locations. In this way, the topics discussed during the webinar series are brought into real-life to solve real problems.

The same goes for the webinars themselves: when attendees were polled, top concerns were opaque white ink printing, water-based ink foaming, press optimization, and maximizing quality on lower-end corrugated printing. FlexoKITE accepted these challenges, gathered expert partners to problem-solve, and presented useful findings in the webinar series.

Regardless of specific flexo market sector, the lessons revealed by FlexoKITE exploration translate across press, ink, and substrate boundaries. For example, test results of various anilox engravings with water-based inks tracked with lacquer application for offset coatings and pointed to reduction in ink or lacquer consumption.

Fixing the Cause, not merely the Symptom

Whether the next technical leap forward in packaging printing is truly revolutionary or merely an incremental evolution, the task for printers now is to maximize existing resources to achieve target quality and to minimize waste — including time and money. FlexoKITE’s scientific methodology involving technical partners from divergent disciplines provides “Crime Scene Investigation”-like focus to pick apart flex variables, thereby discovering real process improvements.

“Enough String”  

With FlexoKITE’s two facilities now operational, true advances in workflow and standard procedures are now within reach of flexographers without sacrificing valuable press time for experimentation. As FlexoKITE collaborators work together to blaze new trails toward greater efficiency, interested printers can introduce process innovation into their own flexo operations based on lessons learned from FlexoKITE.

  • FlexoKITE has an open-door policy to accommodate all co-suppliers, brands, and retailers and includes all market segments.
  • FlexoKITE’s aim is to support the flexo industry as a whole and to not be a closed solution.
  • There are two core segments:
    • Fine tuning and improving todays flexo across all markets.
    • Innovating and developing the flexo of tomorrow.