China’s Lucky flexo plates have evolved traits to match that of established players

Lucky Huaguang Graphics has been a major offset plate manufacturer. How did you enter the flexo plates market?
Wang Zhi (WZ): Lucky’s main business is offset plates. 85% of Lucky Graphics business is offset plates, followed by flexo and graphics art film and a small UV ink production.

It took us 20 years to develop our flexo plates. It’s our own technology, both the analogue and digital flexo plates. Last year, we developed the flattop dot plate. We have introduced it in France and Thailand.

In India, Nulith has been our partner for the last three years. Recently Nulith introduced our digital plates and the initial reports are encouraging. So this year we will focus on the digital flexo plate series. We also have a partner in North India.

What’s the worldwide distribution of your flexo plates?
WZ: Last year we sold 250,000 sqm across the world, including India. In India, we have sold around 16,000 sqm.

India is a big market not only for offset but also for flexo. We hope to expand our overseas market target to 3,00,000 sqm this year.

How do your plates fare in comparison to your competitor products?
WZ: We have supplied to label manufacturers in countries like Italy, France, and Thailand; and even to a big labeller in Canada. The fact that our customers have tried and are now regularly using our plates is a testimony to our quality.

In Europe 60% of our plates sold are digital. Although in India, digital is still a small percentage of consumption.

What’s the USP of your flexo plates?
WZ: First, we help the labellers reduce cost, and second, our plates are comparable with the already established players in the flexo plates market.

Furthermore, we are getting our digital plates approved by digital platesetter manufacturers. It’s work in progress, and once we get that, we hope to push our plates even more aggressively into the market.

How has the acceptance of Lucky flexo plates been in the Indian market?
Kaushil Shah (KS): When we started selling Lucky plates three years ago, we had to shrug off the image of Chinese products being cheap, and quality dubious.

We worked on the analogue plates, selected the best Lucky products. We supplied plates of 4.7, 3.97 and 2.84 thickness, where we received good success. The consistency levels of these plates were reported to be better than our competitors. It saved on processing times, had the desired depth and dot gains, which delivered quality prints.

By the way, Lucky Graphics does not sell off-specs plates. The plates which do not pass the quality tests are discarded, not sold to the market.

Just like blankets, there are no off-specs plates on the market. The fact that our plates cost as much as some choice-two plates of our competitors, is an advantage for us.

The Indian flexo plate market – convention to digital ratio?
KS: In India, 70% of the plate market is still conventional. There are flexo plate players who cannot afford a CTP or a digital processor. Also, the kind of volumes they work with perhaps does not justify the cost of buying a digital platesetter unit.

The flexo market is divided into two parts – the high-quality label market which uses digital plates, and then there is the line-work (tissue papers, etc.) and corrugation market, where quality requirements not as demanding as labels, use higher thickness plates.

Where did you start with?
KS: We started with a segment where we could supply plates where quality was acceptable. Given the quality of the plates, the entry was easy. We gained the confidence with the higher thickness and moved to lower thickness plates.

Also, the conventional market is moving from higher thickness plates to lower thickness, where they are now exhibiting their expertise of plate processing.

Three years into the flexo market, you are now moving from analogue to digital plates?
KS: More than us moving, it’s the market that is moving to digital. And though 70% of the market is still conventional, the big flexo platemaking players are closing down their conventional units and investing in digital units. The reason is that the films are getting expensive.

With our plates, I think we have made digital affordable, which is making our move into digital plates supplies easy.

How easy was it to penetrate the Indian market? Lucky Graphics is still in the process of getting its plates approved by the platesetter manufacturers. How much did the brand Nulith help?
KS: Yes, I agree. The brand Nulith did help, and I would think if we had the approval stamp, it would have been even more helpful.

But, there are always positives and negatives. We had the advantage of cost and disadvantage of approvals. Xeikon and Flint have their tie-up, Esko and Dupont have theirs. While these tie-ups give the flexo platemaker the brand advantage they also come with costs.

Our customers are those who create their own brand, using our plates.

Every company talks about their plates being good – quality, cost, and the like. It will take courage to say a thing of two that’s one has to look for…
KS: This is the challenge with flexo plates – variation and stiffness in the plate which is because of the shore hardness being different on different plates.

If there is a lack of standardisation, it is also categorised as a different branded plates. That’s why there are two qualities of plates.

With Lucky, there’s only one quality of plates. As a matter of policy, they are not going to bring the off-specs plates in the market, they will destroy them.

The fact of the matter is if you do not manufacture in China, you cannot compete in the market. So if you see, almost every major brand has a unit in China. Apple has one, so are flexo plate manufacturers from the West.

How is the label market shaping up?
KS: Our flexo plate business has seen an upward growth, because of installation of new flexo presses. We work closely with the plate processing bureau, promoting products which value-additions like specialities plates for high deposition, higher dot, and varnish applications.

CI Vs gravure?
KS: I think the scale is still tilted in favour of gravure because the gravure machine is still an affordable proposition in comparison to a CI flexo press. It’s been the talk of the town that CI flexo will replace gravure, but if you look at the number of CI installations, it does not really match the enthusiasm.

It’s true that there are a few Indian manufacturers who are tying up with international companies to manufacture in India. If only they are able to bring down the cost of the CI presses will gravure feel the heat. As flexo plate suppliers, it will be a major boon.