Striking colors are key to on-shelf impact, but white ink is essential to the consistent, predictable reproduction of colors that brand owners demand.
Red and yellow and pink and blue – striking bright colors are so simple, they’re among the first things we learn about as young children. Packaging needs that immediacy – to catch the eye of shoppers and trigger connections to their beloved brands in an instant.
Strong colors may appear straightforward, but there’s a phenomenal amount of work going on “beneath the hood” to print the designs people see on the shelves.
In fact, much of the heavy lifting is being done not by recognizable brand colors at all – but by white ink.
Why white is the important ink
White ink typically accounts for around 50% of the ink cost for flexible packaging– and up to 65% of the ink used. When printed on transparent film, it’s the white ink that blocks any color coming from the packaged products.
And on non-white substrates and corrugated board, that white is ensuring other inks reflect light in a controlled manner, keeping the colors true to the brand and truly able to catch the eye in crowded aisles.
Yet getting white right can be problematic in flexographic printing. Printers need to print a strong, solid white ink layer without pinholes (holes that allow the color below to show through, reducing opacity) or mottle (light and dark patterns). In traditional flexography, these defects have troubled printers because the cell walls in the anilox rolls leave voids in the ink layer, allowing the colors to show through each other.
Buying more expensive ink is another option. That comes with an obvious downside. The good news for flexo printers is that there’s now another solution which doesn’t drive up cost or put the brakes on productivity.
While defects can occur on all colors, they have the starkest impact on the white foundation. Fail to nail that white, and no matter how well the process colors are printed, the final product can still turn out dirty, inconsistent or the wrong color.
Getting the white right in packaging print
So how can flexo printers achieve the vibrant and accurate colors needed to catch the attention of customers?
There’s always a way. But the workarounds in traditional flexography involve either spending more money or reducing print capacity. Or both.
For example, if a printer opts to tackle the pinhole problem by increasing the volume of ink, they not only drive up their consumables bill, but they’re likely to increase the drying time, which reduces productivity. If they opt to add extra ‘hits’ of white to fill the voids, they’ll need to involve extra printing stations, which can introduce mismatches and consume 50% or more extra white ink. Which, again, adds drying time.
Buying more expensive ink is another option. That comes with an obvious downside.
The good news for flexo printers is that there’s another solution which doesn’t drive up cost or put the brakes on productivity.
A modern flexo approach, enabled by FLEXCEL NX Technology, provides highly effective and consistent white ink printing, using a range of specially designed plate surface textures.
Controlling how white ink flows
Unique to Miraclon, innovative multi-form surface patterning gives printers precise control over white ink laydown, enabling them to achieve target opacity with optimal ink efficiency – across the whole range of flexo applications.
With multi-form surface patterning, printers can select the ideal solution to match their unique combination of ink, anilox, and substrate. This optimization leads to enhanced on-press performance and productivity. And if any element of the printing system changes – whether that’s the ink, substrate, or the final application – they can simply pick the pattern that delivers the “sweet spot” for each scenario and set up.
Child’s play? Not quite. But suddenly, that white layer – and the vibrant, eye-catching colors it’s working so hard to bring alive – is not so complicated after all.