In the photo from left to right Soma´s Marketing Manager Peter Blasko, Project Manager Roman Dresler, Commercial Director Pavla Kusa, Technology Center Manager Zbynek Zemanek and Technology Specialist Martin Shejbal.

Soma is a flexo press manufacturer with a proven capability to build stable and accurate flexo printing machines that can successfully adapt the modern EGP, Expanded Gamut Printing technology. The first Full HD EGP project between Soma and Marvaco was initiated 2015 and resulted in an ultra-high-quality job “Petfood”, printed 100 lpcm (254 lpi) on OPP in Drupa. Since then, Soma and Marvaco have implemented Full HD EGP also for water based inks on paper and solvent based inks on self-adhesive labels, printed in high line screen of 70 lpcm (178 lpi). The certificate is awarded for the high quality and excellent process efficiency of the prints done in the past two years, and it verifies that the EGP printing results with the Soma technology have been excellent on various substrates.

The technology of expanded color gamut for packaging printing is in daily use among the most advanced printers. To promote the easier implementation and recognition of the process, Marvaco and its American partner company, CSW, have advanced to the stage of awarding partnership certificates to companies manufacturing flexographic printing machines and other suppliers.

The printing companies need skilful and capable partners to implement the EGP technology. Soma’s performance to build efficient and accurate flexo printing machines has been tested and evaluated with various materials and inks, says Kai Lankinen, CEO of Marvaco. He adds that the stability and repeatability of the Soma Optima flexo press meets brand owners’ expectations for the quality, and the process fulfils the strictest productivity needs of the printers.

The EGP technology enables a high-quality, efficient, and more productive packaging printing with no need for spot colors. The predictable and precise brand colors are implemented with digitally assisted ink blending. The color gamut is enriched e.g. with additional OGV (Orange, Green, Violet) process inks, which multiplies the number of available color shades compared to the Pantone+ color series. Even bright shades can be implemented cleanly. With Full HD EGP, the brand colors that have been restricted by the CMYK method in the past can now be printed in a nearly unrestricted, more controlled, and more precise manner, batch after batch.

The other advantages of the EGP technology include parallel printing of different products at the same time and more cost-efficient printing of smaller print runs. However, also using Pantone spot colors in packaging printing is still possible. International brand owners and printing companies are widely moving on to Expanded Gamut Printing, and there is increased interest towards EGP everywhere.

Further information:
Kai Lankinen, CEO
+358 50 427 7616
kai.lankinen@marvaco.fi