Consumables
Imprima Plates deliver higher quality, market differentiation
Friday 16. February 2018 - Toray Graphics in the Czech Republic, a leading manufacturer of waterless offset plate technology, today reported that Reprotech GmbH, a provider of high quality repro services for the commercial printing industry based in Düsseldorf, Germany, is leveraging the unique capabilities of IMPRIMA waterless offset plates to grow its business by serving a range of unique niche markets, including security printing. The company has been in business for almost 30 years and has only qualified employees.
“We adopted Toray IMPRIMA waterless offset plates to better position our company in serving security applications such as driver’s licenses, passports, identity cards and more,” said Gerd Müsch, one of the three owners of Reprotech. “Waterless offset printing is a better solution for printing on plastics and delivers much higher quality overall. These applications require very high resolution, which we are able to easily achieve with our Heidelberg high-resolution plate setters and Toray IMPRIMA plates. This combination has given us a significant competitive advantage in the security printing arena, and is a unique capability our competitors do not have.”
Müsch also notes that in addition to the excellent relationship the company has with Toray and the exceptional support it receives, Reprotech has a strong relationship with Heidelberg. “We actually produce demo plates for printing press manufacturers worldwide using both conventional offset plates and Toray IMPRIMA waterless offset plates,” he says, “and benefit from their excellent support as well. Its a winning combination for us and for our customers.”
At Reprotech, growth in niche markets better served by waterless offset printing, including security printing and more, has more than offset the industry decline in conventional commercial printing. “These niche markets are much more stable than general commercial printing,” Müsch states. “We are working to find new customers in our existing niche markets while also developing new niches we can effectively address with waterless offset. We also find that some more conventional markets, such as labels, can benefit from our expertise. Many do not have their own prepress for offset, and outsourcing this to us makes more sense than the significant investment setting up their own prepress shop would require. Our staff of highly qualified professionals has been working in this area for years. We can readily advise on the best technology to use, make file corrections to ensure the best quality output, and more. Today, about 50% of our plates are waterless, and we expect the balance to shift further in that direction as the general commercial printing market continues to contract.”
Why Waterless Offset?
Not to be confused with dry offset printing, waterless offset is an attractive alternative to the flexographic printing process for short and medium run applications because of the lower print form preparation cost. In addition, the companys IMPRIMA line of waterless offset printing plates provides superior printing results on a wide variety of paper stock and non-absorbent substrates such as foils and synthetic materials. Waterless offset printing not only conserves water, but also reduces waste and eliminates the need for toxic chemicals in the printing process.