Living Among Giants
P+P: Are there any misconceptions about the current state of the label market?
JS: There is a huge misconception among print brokers and other label buyers that digital is the way to go for labels, but we see those customers eventually migrate back to flexo as they see the limitations of digital-specifically color consistency, which is a growing problem with digital, CMYK label printing.While we see digital as a fast-growing area of label printing, it is not a panacea for the typical concern of setup costs and certainly not a one-size-fits-all solution. With high-definition flexo and advanced screening processes, flexo has not only maintained its position as the lowest cost/highest quality option for labels, but now also rivals offset and rotogravure at a fraction of the cost. And with in-house digital platemaking and magnetic dies, savvy label printers are able to keep setup costs low enough to justify the move to higher quality, lower cost, flexo label printing.