Flexographic — TurFlex
A press we drew
before we bought it
TurFlex is a six-colour roll-to-roll line built to a specification Tur wrote: CMYK plus two spots, cold foil in register with the artwork, in-line inspection, and everything from print to finished rewound roll in a single pass. It was the first of its kind in Pakistan when it was commissioned in 2006.
Why it exists
Cold foil, in register, at press speed.
Before 2006, a metallic label made in this country was a printed label sent out to be foiled, then brought back, then die-cut — three handlings, three chances to lose register, and a lead time measured in weeks. Brands quietly dropped the metallic from the design rather than carry the risk.
TurFlex applies foil as a printing station. The foil lays where the artwork says it lays, in the same pass as the ink, and the web never stops. What used to be a three-week embellishment is now part of the run.
We did not buy a press that could do it. We described what we needed and waited for someone to build it.
The line
What the machine will and will not do
Specifications are published so that you can check them against your applicator and your artwork before either of us spends money.
| Parameter | Capability |
|---|---|
| Press | FOCUS ProFlex · 6 print stations · servo-driven |
| Colour | CMYK + 2 spot, or 6 spot colours · white opaque on clear films |
| Web width | Up to 330 mm (13″) |
| Repeat range | Approx. 152–610 mm (6″–24″) rotary |
| Plates | Digital photopolymer, 1.14 mm · flat-top dot · 1–95% at 175 lpi |
| Anilox | Ceramic laser-engraved · 800–1,200 lpi · 2.5–8.0 BCM by station role |
| In-line | Cold foil · lamination · varnish · turn bar for reverse print |
| Converting | Rotary and magnetic die · matrix strip · slit · rewind · sheeting |
| Inspection | 100% camera inspection with barcode verification and fault mapping |
| Roll output | 76 mm (3″) core standard · 152 mm (6″) on request · OD to spec |
Repeat range, anilox set and die inventory are confirmed against your artwork before plates are ordered. Where an existing die in our inventory fits your label, we will tell you — it removes a tooling charge and three days from the lead time.
Specify it properly
Nobody rejects a label for the printing
They reject it because it arrives wound the wrong way and the applicator will not take it. Unwind direction is the single most common error on incoming label artwork. Set the two variables below and we will name the position your purchase order should carry.
Face out · top edge leads
01 · Which way does the print face?
02 · Which edge of the label leaves first?
UNWIND POSITION 1 — FACE OUT, TOP EDGE LEADING
This chart follows the common eight-position convention. Applicator manufacturers number them differently often enough that we confirm the position against your machine's own spec sheet before a die is cut — a thirty-second check that has saved several six-figure runs.
Materials
The label is three materials, and two of them are invisible
Buyers specify the face stock and inherit the adhesive. The adhesive is what decides whether the label is still on the pack after the cold chain, the courier and the supermarket shelf.
Paper Faces
Semi-gloss, vellum, uncoated, textured and wet-strength papers. Direct thermal and thermal-transfer grades for variable data printed at your end.
Film Faces
White and clear PP, PE for squeezable containers, PET for heat and chemical exposure. Clear-on-clear for the no-label look, printed with opaque white as the fifth colour.
Permanent
General-purpose acrylic for cartons and rigid containers. High-tack for recycled kraft and low-energy surfaces where standard adhesive lifts at the corner within a week.
Cold & Wet
Freezer-grade applied down to −20 °C and serviceable below it, plus wet-surface grades for chilled and condensation-prone packs.
Removable & Security
Clean-peel removable for promotions, and tamper-evident constructions that destruct or leave a void pattern on any attempt to lift them.
Liner & Release
Glassine for general use, PET liner for high-speed automatic application and small labels where liner break stops your line, not ours.
Food-contact constructions are specified with the material supplier's declaration of compliance on file and the adhesive migration statement attached to the job.
Data on the label
Half of what a label carries now is machine-readable
The printed face is increasingly the least regulated part. Barcodes must scan first time at a till in a country you will never visit; serialisation codes must be unique, sequential and reportable; and from the Digital Product Passport onward, a data carrier on the pack becomes a legal object rather than a marketing one.
Every code we print is verified on press, not sampled after it. A label that grades below specification stops the web and is mapped out of the roll before it is rewound.
| Carrier | Printed and verified |
|---|---|
| EAN-13 / UPC-A | Retail point of sale · magnification and BWR held |
| GS1-128 | Logistics units, batch and expiry application identifiers |
| GS1 DataMatrix | Pharmaceutical serialisation · small-format 2D |
| QR · DPP-ready | Product passport and consumer data carriers |
| Sequential data | Numbering, lot and unique-code printing in line |
| Verification | Graded on press to ISO/ANSI · target grade A |
| RFID / NFC | Inlay insertion and encoding by arrangement |
| Rejects | Faults mapped and spliced out · roll reported per job |
Honest limits
When flexo is the wrong answer
A folding carton with a critical brand colour and fine reversed type belongs on offset — flexo will get close, and close is not the standard on a shelf-facing pack. A woven or printed care label belongs on the rotary letterpress, because textile substrates need ink films flexo cannot lay. And a run of three hundred labels does not justify six plates.
Tell us the application and the volume and we will point you at the right machine, in this building or outside it.
Begin
Send us the specification
Artwork, face material, adhesive, roll and unwind — or a photograph of the pack and the name of your applicator. We will do the rest and tell you what is missing.