There are primarily two kinds of printing techniques used in packaging – flexographic printing and rotogravure printing. Each of these techniques yields different results.
Flexographic printing, commonly known as “flexo”, is essentially a dot-printing process. In this technique, a series of dots are printed onto a surface through rubber plates. Flexographic printing was invented in the 19th century. Although it has advanced much since then, it still cannot match rotogravure printing in quality. The printing result of a flexographic printing process is not as bold, crisp and realistic as it is in rotogravure printing.
Rotogravure printing is a relatively new printing technique. Its use yields high quality images, and colors that are bold and crisp - overall a very attractive printing. Unlike flexographic printing which is done using rubber plates, rotogravure printing is done using etched cylinders. The use of cylinders offers many advantages.
One of the advantages is that the cylinders create depressions onto a surface and then fill color into those depressions. Each cylinder fills in only one color. A combination of cylinders can be used to create a multi-colored image and ad – to make an art work on a plastic pouch.
Another advantage of using cylinders over flexographic printing is that it is easy, and therefore inexpensive, to create variations of a uniform packaging design to package slightly different versions of the same product.
Let’s try to understand this by an example. A business sells a food product “X” in two variations: one variation uses red beans while the second uses green beans. The business will want to keep the packaging design uniform to show both variations are essentially the same product. At the same time, they will want to keep them a little different to make it easier for people to tell them apart. A way to do this is to change just one color on the pouch. This is very easy in rotogravure printing as it only requires replacing one cylinder with another. There is no cumbersome process involved.
StandUpPouches.net has its own rotogravure printing plant. There is an expert staff for carrying out the printing process.
To sum it all, the key difference between rotogravure and flexographic printing is the quality of the print. Rotogravure printing offers much better quality and with its water-based ink, it is safe as well. You should seriously consider stand up bags if you are looking for a food and beverage packaging option that has absolutely no contaminants and makes your product stand out from the rest.