Summary

Since some time, the newspaper industry has closely studied flexography as a possible variation of conventional letterpress. From its very beginnings in 1981 to the present day, there have been a great many developments concerning both the presses and the materials used. Can this new process now be regarded as a serious alternative to offset? IFRA, together with NATS, the Scandinavian newspaper association, initiated a research project at the beginning of 1984 to compare the economic and qualitative possibilities of flexo newspaper printing with those of the currently more widely used offset process. The Graphic Arts Laboratory of the Technical Research Center of Finland (VTI’) in Helsinki was commissioned to carry out this project. Its final report is now available. We present its findings in this Special Report.