The Milton Keynes-based firm made the move to slash production time by over 70% from two and a half hours to just 40 minutes.

"With a demand for faster plate manufacture, we realised we had to reduce the time taken to produce a plate. DuPont was our obvious choice of supplier to help us in our quest," said Bong UK origination manager Chris Pepperell.

Bong had been using a DuPont Cyrel 1002 solvent flexo plate processor before choosing to switch to the Cyrel Fast thermal processor, and moving to a larger plate format. The wide range of envelope sizes Bong produces means it needs to batch up multiple jobs on a single plate to improve efficiency and reduce waste.

"The larger plate format will allow us to produce more jobs per plate," said Pepperell. "The system is also very environmentally friendly as there are no chemicals involved, which means no more hazardous waste."

Story by Barney Cox