In the contemporary business world, flexible packaging comes in handy in several ways, and among them is advertising.
The printing quality has to be the best if you’re going to make significant in-roads into the target market. You have to convince the customers of your focus on quality if they are to pay attention to the products.
While there is an assortment of printing technologies, hybrid printing, which blends digital technology and the flexo printing machine, is emerging as the most functional. It offers the flexibility, automation, and job tracking that contemporary customers demand.
What Is Hybrid Printing?
In a nutshell, hybrid printing combines digital printing and conventional flexo. This technology makes the printing process clean, precise, fast, and cost-effective.
The flexo tech works with various substrates and allows for countless finishing options.
Reasons To Choose Hybrid Printing
A survey by North American Publishing Company (NAPCO) and InfoTrends showed a significant shift in demand for the digital print market. The need for customized communication and variable data printing is growing, and as a business looking to expand your commercial printing, you must move with the times.
It’s a simple choice if you compare it with a flexo printing machine, given the advantages of hybrid printing. Hybrid has faster production times, is much more cost-friendly, and hybrid printing tools cost much less.
Typically, the conventional flexo relies on elastomer sleeves or photopolymer plate production, which might be costly for small print runs—the hybrid cuts down on this waste.
Often, customers will need to review printing projects before mass production can commence. They might initially request 300 copies of the marketing brochure as a pilot project. If the project proves successful, they may order an additional 100,000 brochures. The hybrid workflow allows the flexibility to use the same print-ready files, make changes if required and initiate the short runs without suffering the enormous costs of flexo printing (on short runs).
Hybrid doesn’t require the plates, which increases its versatility to meet the various needs of the customers at a fraction of the cost and faster pace.
Setting the hybrid up doesn’t cost much either, and considering all the cost savings involved, the system is sure to increase your margin (what more could your printing business need?).
Flexo printing is good where there are bigger jobs, but only better than digital printing (in that aspect). Hybrid though has the best of both worlds.
Faster Workflow With Hybrid Machines
Hybrid machines effectively blend the automation of digital and the economy of flexo printing. But the printing automation feature is the real-saver where one job completes and the other begins.
The hybrid printing machines have various features that make your printing workflow faster. These include:
- Advanced customizations that allow pre-programming before the run to accommodate various needs. The changing job requirements, such as the need for a blend of variable and static components and run length, demand a level of efficiency only achieved by customization.
- The business leverages automated functions such as coating, labeling, cutting, and packaging to increase the job’s speed. Fewer touch points, greater flexibility, and reduced errors tie back to better margin and profitability.
- There’s also consolidation of tasks, including decorating and conversion, which reduces staffing costs.
Typically, better margins in any business call for production efficiency. Make your pressroom more efficient with a digital flexo printing system. This hybrid printing system combines the best of flexo and digital printing to cut costs, speed up the printing and improve the quality of the prints. If you have not switched to the most efficient printing system, your printing business is losing big time.
