Asahi Products, a leader in flexographic photopolymer plate development, has announced that its customer, Italian-based ACM S.p.A, has been given two awards from the Associazone Tecnica Italiana per la Flessografia (ATIF), an Italian flexographic association. A subsidiary of the SIT group, ACM is one of Europe’s leaders in flexible packaging, with broad experience in digital and flexographic printing, and earned awards for Best UV Flexo Printing and Flexographic Process Innovation. 

Taking home the ‘Best UV Flexo Printing’ honor was ACM’s work for its customer, GOOD. The job was printed in 80 I/cm screen ruling using 8 color printing on a 12 micron PET film printed on an Omet xFlex 670 with platemaking on the latest Esko Crystal XPS and the water-wash AWPTM-DEW plate. 

The ‘Flexographic Process Innovation’ award was won thanks to ACM’s application of cold foil inline by using the Asahi AWP™-DEW CleanPrint water wash plate to transfer the adhesive glue before applying the cold foil inline in 8 color printing. 

The awards were given during the ATIF’s annual trade association meeting that took place on November 15, 2022, in Bologna, Italy. 

“It was my dream to start a prepress department with in-house reproduction and platemaking for higher quality and faster reaction time to customer deadlines,” said Massimo Raffaele, founder of ACM. “The project was led by Fabrizio Marchetti, our Prepress Director, and incorporates an ESKO Crystal XPS plate imaging system using Asahi AWP™-DEW CleanPrint plates. Our decision to move platemaking in-house and the terrific work Marchetti has done in heading up this effort has been validated by feedback from satisfied customers and these two prestigious awards.”

Award judges commented on the very clean highlight printing with optimum ink laydown, perfect registration and a good match to Cromalin proofs.

“We are seeing a growing number of flexographic printers like ACM bringing prepress in house to better manage quality and time to market,” said Dieter Niederstadt, Asahi’s Technical Marketing Manager. “We congratulate them on receiving these prestigious awards and are looking forward to working with them in the future to find ways to improve their prepress services even more.”

To learn more about Asahi, please visit www.asahi-photoproducts.com.