Summary

Since 1981 flexography has been studied as a possible alternative printing method for newspaper production. From it’s beginning to the present day there have been many technical improvements which have greatly influenced both the print quality and the productivity. IFRA investigated the black/white print quality in an earlier project. The results were published in the Special Report 3.1 in 1985. Four-colour printing could not be studied at that time as too few flexo presses had been installed and there was little practical experience to be gathered. Therefore, IFRA together with NATS, The Scandinavian Newspaper Association, initiated another research project in 1987 to evaluate the poten- tial of four-colour quality in flexo and offset. The Graphics Arts Laboratory of the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), in Helsinki, was commissioned to carry out this project. Their final report is now available. In this Special Report, we present their findings.