Benchmarking gravure cylinders vs. web-offset plates

• This paper deals with an important part of a forthcoming Survey of the European Publication Printing Industry - and highlights the developments in recent years of the processing costs of producing either offset plates or gravure cylinders. In 1985-1986, one of the most comprehensive studies of the publication printing industry was carried out by the European Rotogravure Association in Munich. This study was the first of its kind and a comparable study has, to author's knowledge, never been compiled. The objective of the present paper is to determine what factors are important when the choice of a particular printing method is made, and if this process was fundamentally different in 1985 than to-day. The hypothesis is that there were some determining factors in 1985 such as the economic consequences (processing costs and market prices), the speed (lead-time) and finally the quality of the printing process to be chosen. In order to make the two studies comparable a statistical analysis of various European macro economic indices has been used, and now 20 year later the first follow-up study is now available. With an abundant number of players marketing and selling CTP-solutions, there is a tremendous competition in the world market. Hence, most industry observers have the opinion (or belief) that producing web-offset plate's to-day is much cheaper and easier than processing gravure cylinders. The gravure cylinder processes are still considered to be very expensive, cumbersome and old fashioned to the great disadvantage of the gravure printing process. What is often forgotten is that the recent web-offset plate technology is in fact emulating the much earlier developed gravure technology, going directly from the digital file to the image carrier. The big difference is that modem PC and networking technology has made the direct digital interfaces very much cheaper for the gravure printing industry than it was 20 years ago for the first pioneers, and the reliability of the engraving process has reached a level where gravure proofs are no longer necessary.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Gravure cylinder processing; Computer to Plate (CTP) Technology; web-offset-plates; Electro-mechanical engraving; Direct digital engraving

Mass communication

Masskommunikation

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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