Creative Graphics (CG), a prominent Indian prepress shop specialized in flexo and letterpress plate production, selected the Esko CDI Spark 4260 plate imager (www.esko.com) to meet the increasing demand for high quality plates in India's booming flexo market. The company also invested in Esko's Suite 10 packaging prepress software to benefit from significant cost savings through the automation of its flexo plate production. Being the first prepress shop in North India investing in a high resolution digital flexo imager, Creative Graphics will be able to offer the highest quality plates to the corrugated, flexible packaging and label markets – all of which are experiencing significant growth in India.
With many large global–brand supermarkets now arriving in India, there is a growing demand for higher quality labels and packaging. The same trend is also being driven by locally produced products made for export. “We see a real investment boom in flexo printing here in India, with lots of new presses being installed. With this boom came a demand for higher quality imaging and print consistency. As we wanted to seize this opportunity and increase our capacity, we decided to go for the best,” says Deepanshu Goel, CEO of Creative Graphics. “Esko is the global standard in digital flexo imaging and was the obvious choice. Their CDIs deliver the highest quality imaging and their high speed capability delivers vast improvements in our shop floor productivity. The proven packaging prepress solutions speed up production and drive down costs - making us more cost-competitive.”
Support was another key factor in CG’s decision to partner with Esko. “On top of delivering the market’s most innovative technology, Esko has been continuously investing since 1996 in a highly qualified team of engineers specialized in the flexo market in India. This kind of local support offers peace of mind and reinforces Esko’s commitment to the Indian market,” adds Goel.
Esko partnership enables CG to capture quality flexo business
The partnership with Esko opens up new business opportunities for CG in terms of quality. Apart from board packaging and labels, the high-end flexible packaging market also offers good potential for CG as many brand owners are moving to new materials for product packaging - both because of increased shelf impact and recyclability. Many of these new materials cannot be printed using gravure technology. The company also eyes significant opportunities in the flexo label market with a growing number of new presses lately installed across the country.
“We see an increasing demand for large format plates for the flexo and corrugated markets in India,” says Hoshi Deboo, VP Asia Pacific & Japan at Esko. “Creative Graphics’ confidence in Esko reinforces that we’ve been building digital flexo on a solid platform - the CDI's - since 1995. We are delighted to partner with Creative Graphics to lead the flexo boom in India.”
CDI Spark 4260: perfect larger size digital flexo imager for trade shops
The Esko CDI family offers the widest range of digital flexo imagers - from small to extremely large, and for both plates or sleeves. With its larger size plates and impressive productivity, the CDI Spark 4260 perfectly fits the demands of trade shops and converters. The CDI Spark 4260 is a high-quality, cost-effective, productive solution that produces plates for flexible packaging, label and corrugated markets.
Like all CDI Imagers, the CDI Spark 4260 is equipped with dedicated optics that guarantee superior and reliable imaging. With the HighRes Optics 40 option, CG enjoys fully variable imaging resolutions between 2000 and 4000 ppi on a job-to-job basis - delivering a significantly extended tonal range with smooth vignettes and exceptional highlights and shadows. The CDI Spark 4260 can image a full size 42” x 60” / 1067 x 1524 mm plate of any thickness in just 12 minutes.
