Flexo printing puts the design onto packaging film before it is converted into rolls, bags, sheets or liners. We run it in Egypt at up to 8 colours per side, on 6- and 8-colour machines. Which process your pack needs is decided by run length and artwork, not by price.
That is the short answer. The longer one starts with the number everybody quotes and nobody defines.
The colour count you are quoted is the machine's, not your design's
Ask for flexo printing in Egypt and the first number you will be given is a colour count. It is the number of printing stations on the press. It is not the number of colours available to your artwork, and the gap between the two is where a first proof usually goes wrong.
Three things take stations before the design gets any.
White. On paper, white is the paper. On film it is an ink, and it is the one every other colour is printed on top of. A transparent or metallised structure needs a white underlay for the colours above it to read as themselves rather than as tints of whatever is behind them. On clear polyethylene film, white is not a design choice — it is a station you have to budget.
Brand colours that cannot be built from process. Process printing makes every colour from four process inks, and some brand colours cannot be built that way. Deep blues and strong oranges are the usual casualties, coming out approximately right and not reliably the same twice. A spot colour is mixed to the target and printed from its own station. Every spot colour you protect costs one.
Finish and function. A matt or gloss varnish and a coloured reverse for a laminate each take a station of their own. A window left unprinted so the product shows does not — it is a gap knocked out of the white — but it has to be registered, and registration is what the colour count buys you.
Count honestly and eight fills fast. Four process colours, one spot, a white underlay and a varnish is seven — and the eighth is gone the moment a second brand colour has to be protected. This is why an up-to-8-colour flexo press is a different proposition from a six-colour one, and it is the first thing to settle when you compare quotations: not how many colours the press has, but how many your design actually needs.
Flexo printing vs rotogravure: which process your job needs
Flexo is not the only way to print packaging film. The other is rotogravure, and the thing that separates them is not quality — it is where the cost sits.
Flexo printing uses flexible plates. Setup is comparatively quick and comparatively cheap, so the cost of starting a job is low and the cost per metre is moderate. That shape suits short and mid-length runs, repeat jobs whose artwork changes, and anything you want live without a long lead-in.
Rotogravure uses engraved cylinders, one per colour. Engraving is a fixed cost paid before anything prints, and it does not care whether you then run ten thousand metres or a million. Past a certain run length the engraving is amortised and the cost per metre drops below flexo. It also holds fine detail and photographic tone better, because an engraved cell carries ink more precisely than a plate does.
| Where the cost sits | Flexo printing | Rotogravure |
|---|---|---|
| Image carrier | Flexible plate | Engraved cylinder, one per colour |
| Cost of starting a job | Lower | Higher, paid before anything prints |
| Where it wins | Short and mid-length runs, artwork that changes | Long runs, where setup is spread thin |
| Fine gradients and photographic detail | Good, with limits | The stronger of the two |
| Artwork changes later | Cheaper to redo | A new cylinder |
| What we run | Up to 8 colours per side | Up to 8 colours per side |
One honest note on that table. We run up to 8 colours per side on both processes, so the choice between them is not about how many colours you can have — it is only about where the cost sits. What nobody can tell you in advance is the run length at which engraving pays for itself, because it depends on how many cylinders your design needs and on the quantity you are committing to. Ask with your artwork and your annual volume in hand and you will get a real number instead of a rule of thumb.
What flexo printing cannot do
Suppliers tend to be vague here, so it is worth saying plainly.
Flexo struggles where tone has to fade to nothing. A vignette running smoothly to zero, a soft drop shadow, a photographic image with detail in the shadows — this is where the plate's limits show, as a visible step where the tone should have faded out, or detail that fills in and goes muddy. The job is not impossible in flexo; it is a job where you will spend the whole proofing cycle arguing about the same gradient.
Very fine reversed text — light type knocked out of a dark background — is the other one. Below a certain size the ink spreads into the gaps and the letters close up.
If your artwork is built around either, that is a rotogravure conversation, and it is better to have it before the plates are made than after the first proof.
Substrates: the films and laminates we print on
The process is only half the specification. The other half is the structure underneath it, because the same ink on a different substrate is a different colour.
We print on polyethylene film from our own extrusion, and on laminated structures built from five materials: PE is polyethylene, BOPP is biaxially oriented polypropylene, PET is polyester, Al is aluminium foil, and MTZ is a metallised layer. They combine as PE/PE, BOPP/PE, BOPP/BOPP, BOPP/MTZ, PET/PE, BOPP/PET/PE and PET/Al/PE, laminated on a solventless line that bonds the layers without solvent. Which structure you need is set by barrier, stiffness and sealing rather than by print, and we work through that decision in our guide to laminated packaging film structures. If you are still choosing a mono or multilayer PE film, the layer and micron specifications are the place to start.
Printed film is then converted into the format your line takes: rolls for automatic and form-fill-seal machines, bags, sheets and liners. Our printed film runs on FFS and auto-packaging lines for powders, tissues, legumes and liquids, and is converted into cheese packs, courier bags and warning tape.
Colour on film is not colour on paper
One expectation causes most colour disputes on printed film: that a Pantone reference approved on a paper proof will reappear on the pack.
It will not, exactly, and the reason is physical rather than anyone's fault. A Pantone swatch is an ink film of a defined thickness on white, opaque, absorbent paper. Your pack is a different ink, laid at a different thickness, on a substrate that may be transparent, metallised, or white only because there is an ink underneath making it so. The substrate is part of the colour.
Two things follow. Approve colour on the actual structure you are buying, not on a paper proof — the paper proof tells you the design is right, not that the colour is. And tell your supplier which one or two colours are brand-critical, because if every colour is treated as equally critical then in practice none of them is.
What to send before anyone can quote
Flexo printing is quoted from artwork, not from a description of artwork. This is the list that makes a quotation real, and comparable between suppliers.
| What to send | Why it changes the price |
|---|---|
| Vector artwork, with fonts outlined or supplied | Raster art has to be rebuilt, and the rebuild is a cost and a risk |
| Your colour breakdown: process, spot, and which are brand-critical | Decides the station count, which decides the machine and the price |
| The structure, or the pack's job if you have not chosen one | Ink behaves differently on PE, BOPP, PET and metallised film |
| Format and dimensions: roll width and core size, or bag or sheet size | A roll for an FFS line and a pre-made bag are different conversions |
| Repeat length, or the pack dimensions it has to fit | Sets the plate geometry |
| Annual volume and order quantity | The single biggest lever between flexo and rotogravure |
| Whether a window, matt varnish or metallic is wanted | Varnish and metallic each take a station; a window has to be registered |
| Your filling line and its speed | Decides the sealing layer and film handling as much as print does |
Expect three proofing stages, and do not sign off at the wrong one. A digital proof is a screen view: it proves layout, copy and barcodes, and nothing about colour. A physical proof is ink on the real substrate, and it is the only stage where a colour disagreement is cheap to fix. Press approval is the first run on the machine, checked against the approved physical proof. A supplier who offers to go straight from a screen to production is not offering speed — they are moving the proofing cost onto you.
Food-contact certification: the question above colour count and price
If your film touches food, there is a question that outranks colour count, process and price, and it is the one we are asked least often: can the supplier put the scope in writing?
Printing inks, lamination adhesives and the film itself are all part of a food-contact declaration. We hold BRCGS for packaging materials, FSSC 22000 version 6 for food safety, the Global Recycled Standard, ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001, and Halal certification. Every one is downloadable from our certificates page — not a logo in a footer, the certificate itself.
Read the scope when you download it. A certificate covers named products and named production lines, not a whole factory, so the correct question to any supplier, us included, is whether the scope covers the product you are ordering. A supplier who cannot answer that in writing is a supplier whose audit becomes your problem.
Flexo printing in 6th of October City, Egypt
Al-Qadisiyah Pack has produced polyethylene film in 6th of October City, Egypt since 1998. We extrude from 15 to 200 microns, laminate seven structures on a solventless line, and print rotogravure and flexographic up to 8 colours per side on 6- and 8-colour machines. Our film reaches food and beverage producers including Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Pepsi — the full list is on our clients page — and we export to Libya and Saudi Arabia.
Send the artwork and the list above through our contact page and you will get a specification you can compare, rather than a number you cannot. The full capability table is on our flexible packaging page, and if you are evaluating suppliers more broadly, our guide to qualifying a flexible packaging supplier in Egypt covers what to check beyond print.