Paolo Grasso: “Print innovation lies in India”

The theme of the presentation delivered by Paolo Grasso of Omet at LMAI Conference in Goa was ‘Print Innovation’. In his presentation, Grasso described the journey of flexography since 1970 and said that print innovation lies in India.

06 Aug 2013 | By Anand Srinivasan

Grasso started his presentation by narrating the story of flexography. He said, “Once upon a time there was a printing press. And then, a Swiss company eliminated the line-shaft, a Dutch company applied servomotors onto a label press, an Italian company replaced print cylinders with sleeves, a Swiss company began using direct drive motors, a Danish company introduced the UV base flexo machine, an Italian company introduced the vision-based register system, an American company developed the flexo cassette, and yet an Italian company introduced a new design of the flexo station. And what we have today is the advanced flexo press.”

He further added that in 1970s a few labels were produced and mostly wet glue. “Letterpress and offset were the most widely used technologies then. In 1990s, full rotary UV presses for PS labels printing conquered the market, which suited the needs of continuous changes of marketing designs. In today’s world, increasing shorter runs make converters adopt digital technology.”

According to Grasso, innovations are driven by the market and India is already one of the largest growing markets in the world. “Omet’s full rotary press which is suited for long as well as short runs will drive innovations,” Grasso said. The full rotary press, equipped with register controls for precise settings, is ideal for higher speeds and the short web path ensures waste reduction.

Grasso suggested that to come up with innovations one must select a right press. And this decision depends on reduced setup time, wastage, print quality and registration and the build quality.

“India is now one of the most important destinations in this global printing map. The credit goes to all present in this hall today. We urge the printers to keep moving forward and keep innovating,” concluded Grasso.