Nitin Patil, managing director of Numex Blocks, is a genuine flexography evangelist. He said: "Our commitment is to excellence. Many medium-to-large converters at the high-end prefer to leave support services like pre-press and the associated costs to specialists in that field."

In the first quarter of 2010, Numex extended its investment by adding a Kodak Thermoflex Wide II platesetter to its existing narrow-web setter, reflecting increased demand in the wide-format display market for greater speed.

While speaking to PrintWeek India, Patil told that: "The new system has cut plate production time dramatically and the process is a lot cleaner than before."

He added: "A set of plates that would have taken us around four hours to produce, now takes an hour. "

Suhas Kulkarni national business manager packaging segment at Kodak India, said: "Kodak's Thermoflex Wide II platesetter offers the flexibility of processing digital flexo, letterpress and digital photopolymer plates."

Kulkarni added: "Thermoflex handles a wider gamut of screen angles and plate thicknesses. Printers were previously limited to three thicknesses of plates, now they have a choice of seven."

Patil felt the new platesetter has improved halftones and vignettes when outputting plates for eight-colour and nine-colour flexo presses which have become the norm in the Indian print industry.

The firm hopes that the kit will open up new markets such as those in the edible oil and food processing sector.

The 28-member Numex was the first to go digital in India in pre-press flexography.