Prepress

Flexo Corrugated Plate Box with Less Packaging Waste: another step toward improving sustainability

Monday 11. December 2023 - Asahi Photoproducts, and our parent company, Asahi Kasei, have more than a half century of bringing increasingly sustainable flexographic solutions to market. And we dont only have sustainable products, sustainability is at the heart of our company philosophy.

By Yusuke Kaneko, Global Marketing Manager, Asahi Kasei
In the world of flexography, we recognize that solvent-wash plates are still the dominant technology. We are working hard to bring solutions to market that will help flexo operations journey on the road to Solvent ZERO. That’s why we have brought to market solutions like our new AFPTM-R reduced solvent plates, and have introduced our new AWP-LOOPTM waste water recycling system this year.
As an additional component in this sustainability strategy, we have now also reduced our packaging by removing the foam layer between the plates. This allows more plates to fit in the box, significantly reducing the packaging per plate, reducing packaging waste material and CO2 emissions. This initiative is in alignment with Asahi Photoproducts “Solvent ZERO” approach to work on a CO2 reduction accross our devision for products, service and logistics.
Asahi Kasei, as parent company of Asahi Photoproducts, has a stringent plan in place to continuously reduce our carbon footprint as well as to help our customers reduce theirs. The new packaging design for our flexographic plates, reduces packaging waste in two ways. First, it uses less cushioning, reducing the amount of packaging material. Secondly, as a result we are putting more sheets into the same size package, cutting back on the number of deliveries required. In addition, we have eliminated the white layer of PE that we previously placed in between plates. And the packaging offers just as much protection for the product as our previous packaging. We believe our customers will see this as a win/win, and it reduced waste at the customer side.
In addition to this new packaging design, the market introduction of Asahi’s AWP-LOOPTM water recycling unit, Asahi is working with customers to develop a migration path to Solvent ZERO for even more sustainability in the flexo printing process. These initiatives represent an integrated approach by the company to ensure optimum sustainability without any compromise in quality or performance.