March 20, 2025

Litho, flexo, and digital each have their place – and all remain essential formats

In boxmaking, which printing method is best?

“All three have a place,” says Joseph Morelli, chief commercial officer at Huston Patterson and Lewisburg Printing Co. (and admittedly a litho booster). “There’s not a right or a wrong answer. There’s a right answer for everybody’s needs.”

The criteria that boxmakers and brand owners want are always changing, but the constant themes are their demands for excellence, faster speed to market, higher sustainability, and lower costs.

Here, three industry insiders share the ins, outs, advantages, and challenges of their favored print technologies—ever evolving to meet the needs of a dizzying commercial landscape.

Lithography: Tradition of Quality

In 1796, a German playwright got the idea to capitalize on the incompatibility of oil and water to print his scripts. In the years since, quality has been the hallmark of offset lithographic printing.

Today, quality remains “a key differentiator” that distinguishes lithography and makes products stand out on the shelf, says Tonya Kowa-Morelli, chief operating officer at Huston Patterson and Lewisburg Printing Co.

“Our images aren’t photographs, but they are the highest resolution and the best quality of print you can get in the marketplace,” says Kowa-Morelli, whose firm provides litho labels and top sheets, plus some folding carton, largely for corrugated box manufacturers. “There’s not even a close comparison in the other areas of packaging.”

Early this year, Huston Patterson and Lewisburg Printing Co. augmented its extensive fleet of litho printers with a new 57-inch, 7-color Koenig & Bauer offset press, complete ink choices through ultraviolet (UV) and aqueous capabilities. Plans are in place to retire one or two older machines and consolidate functions for greater efficiencies as the new press’s capabilities become clear.

The demand for quick turnaround is intensifying, and the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of lithography have kept pace, especially in slashing make-ready time and operations, says Kowa-Morelli. Litho doesn’t deserve its reputation for slower turnaround, she adds. The new Koenig & Bauer press, capable of printing more than 16,000 sheets per hour, allows operators to change seven plates simultaneously, in two minutes. Inline cameras read for color balance as sheets move through the machine, minimizing the need to stop and check.

Joseph Morelli has seen lead times “diminish substantially.” An intentionally efficient process, including a robust supply chain and inventory, plus an in-house sheeter that preps sheets for immediate transfer to the press, combine to accelerate turnaround.

“There’s no such thing as a week or two,” Morelli says.

“Our entire process is set up to enable speed and quality. Once we have approval and a purchase order, we’re oftentimes shipping within two to three days.”

Lithographic presses can print up to 10 colors, with Huston Patterson and Lewisburg Printing Co. offering up to eight colors and typically running between four and six. Offset lithography, used to generate labels or top sheets laminated onto a box, allows corrugated packaging to replicate brand colors with fidelity, says Morelli.

“A lot of our clients and the brand owners spend a lot of money to have a specific color represented for their brand,” he says.

“When you have Coca-Cola red, they’re very specific about that color. If a shopper sees a Coca-Cola red sitting next to another Coke box that’s a slightly different shade of red, it doesn’t look good.”

Lithography provides the consistency that “absolutely matters,” he says. “When it comes to not only achieving that standard but then achieving the consistency from run to run, from month to month, from year to year, you’re going to find that with litho.”

Sustainability measures accommodate the demands of customers for eco-friendly products and services. Litho presses can accommodate aqueous inks that are easily recyclable. An in-house sheeter such as Huston Patterson and Lewisburg Printing Co.’s cuts sheets to size, eliminating the waste that comes with printing first and cutting later.

The excellence inherent in lithography requires lithography operators with high-level skills, adding a wrinkle to the constant struggle to fill manufacturing positions.

While digital and flexography operators can be trained in a few weeks, lithographers are still craftspeople who need years to learn their trade, says Kowa-Morelli. She sustains excellence by cultivating a culture devoted to learning, including a new two-year management track that attracts and trains young talent for fulfilling careers.

Keeping costs in line is a matter of constantly seeking efficiencies with process and quality controls. Kowa-Morelli makes sure that operators understand the whys behind the rules of operating their machinery.

The jobs might seem like little more than running paper through a copier, “until they realize that the piece of paper costs this much, and all of this is going to Walmart.”

“When you go to Walmart, you can be proud and tell your kids that you helped produce that,” she says.

Flexography: Matter of Volume

Flexography, invented in 1890, derived its name from the flexible plates able to roll on the presses. Since then, flexibility in use remains its hallmark, including its suitability for corrugated and other substrates.

Flexography remains the standard for brown shipping and storage boxes printed in one or two colors, says John Burgess, president of Pamarco’s flexo division, which produces and refurbishes anilox rolls.

But flexography is also rising to the competition from digital, he says. Big-box stores have been driving the demand for boxes adorned with dazzling images that convert shoppers into buyers.

“You don’t see the product,” he says. “You see the product that’s on the box. Corrugated has turned from what was traditionally the brown box business and morphed into a lot of display and point-of-purchase (POP) activity.”

Flexo has “absolutely kept up” with that demand, Burgess says. Printing plates, inks, and machines have evolved to boost color ranges, sharpen images, and increase efficiencies in make-ready and output.

“If you’re in the brown box business, you’ve got to be highly productive,” Burgess says. “You’ve got to produce thousands and thousands of boxes an hour. If you’re in the display business, it’s a very different game. You’re looking for that high-quality, value-added print job.”

Pamarco’s anilox rolls that meter ink for precise application are part of the evolution. Once mechanically engraved for ranges around 250 lines per inch (lpi), anilox can now be laser-engraved up to 800 or 900 lpi, Burgess says. The higher the line screen, the lighter and more precise the ink application.

“We’re putting down a much thinner ink film, allowing much better-quality graphics instead of dumping huge amounts of ink on the sheet,” says Burgess.

Advances in plate cleaning have shaved time from make-ready. Other innovations include improved drying systems that stabilize flexographic ink on corrugated substrates—a leap forward for crisp POP displays.

“The whole cycle has ramped up over the last 10 years or so,” Burgess says. “It’s offered tremendous advantages.”

As experienced press operators retire, the care and maintenance of flexographic machinery, including the regular cleaning needed to keep anilox rolls at peak performance, are “a huge issue,” Burgess says. Turnover on the facility floor produces people who are less likely to do the cleanup and maintenance “because they really don’t understand.”

In response, OEMs are making machines “as close to plug-and-play as they possibly can,” with controls resembling the game systems familiar to young operators, he says.

With customers and brand owners demanding sustainability, flexography is stepping up. Available aqueous inks reduce the need for solvent-based inks. UV light-emitting diode inks are free of volatile organic compounds. Expanded gamut printing for flexo is expanding color quality and consistency while reducing waste, cleaning, and setup time, according to the Flexographic Technical Association.

Burgess adds that flexo’s compatibility with corrugated is its eco-friendly bull’s-eye. “The beauty of corrugated is it’s a very sustainable medium,” says Burgess.

Still, will brand owners continue paying a premium for higher-quality printing on corrugated? Burgess wonders about “what’s left and how much further you can go,” especially because “a $2 razor blade is still a $2 razor blade, no matter how neat the graphics are.”

With its flutes and absorbency, corrugated remains “not the easiest to print on,” he adds. The ceiling on quality improvements hasn’t been reached yet, he believes, but at some point, the cost-versus-quality equation will tilt away from investments in the sharpest possible edge. Brown box printing will continue to find its advantage in volume. Some facilities maximize their 4-color presses by running successive 2-color jobs, setting up the second job while the first is running.

“That’s where the game is won or lost,” Burgess says.

Digital: Rapid Results

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, e-commerce was trending upward, and customers of the Canadian packaging provider Moyy were asking for more color and definition on their boxes.

“As brands started to take their products from the shelf to the doorstep, they realized that it can’t look like it got dropped off the back of a boat,” says George Perreira, vice president of business development at Moyy. “A beautifully printed box should reflect what the customer fell in love with online. It needs to arrive looking exactly like the product they envisioned when they clicked ‘yes’ and made their purchase.”

In 2018, that rising demand for brand perception enhancements—but as always, competitively priced—prompted Moyy to invest in an EFI Nozomi C18000 and its new, single-pass digital printing technology.

The “crazy challenges” of those early days included the theft of the copper wiring from the generator powering the Nozomi, just as jobs were starting to backlog. Introducing Canada’s first single-pass digital printer “skyrocketed our name in the market,” says Perreira.

Single-pass digital printing offers what its name says—one run that prints up to nine colors. Without a reliance on plates, digital offers “rip it and print it” capabilities, Perreira says. Customers can send a PDF equipped with vector files and fonts, and Moyy enters it into the software for immediate printing.

The technology competes with lithography on quality, volume, pricing, and direct-to-market capabilities, he added. “It’s very fast, and because of that speed, we’re able to offer competitive pricing that’s in line with the rest of the market,” says Perreira.

The versatility of single-pass digital printing allows customers to change their orders at any time without investing in a significant amount of inventory. On-demand service keeps customers nimble enough to meet the changing specifications of retailers.

“We receive an order, and by the next week, it changes because the retailer or brand owner wants to make adjustments,” Perreira says. “One day, they request English and French, and the next, it’s English and Spanish.”

POP displays can be adapted easily within a single run, he notes. A snack maker promoting its products for a sports championship can print different team names and logos within a single run. The customer gets the precise number of displays needed for each region but with the price break of the larger run.

In Stanley Cup season, for instance, “digital printing makes it possible to order 1,000 displays and customize them strategically—some for Vancouver, some for Montreal, and some for Winnipeg. If we want to target Philadelphia for the Broad Street Bullies, we can create a unique version just for them. Despite the variations, it all comes at a single price.”

While litho and flexo remain more cost-effective for large runs, the value-added options—including the precision that promotes sustainability by minimizing waste—dispel digital’s reputation as cost-limited to small jobs, Perreira says. As digital keeps growing, he anticipates the day, perhaps within a decade, when machine manufacturers offer systems for converting flexography machines into digital by simply swapping out the innards.

“That’s going to be game-changing,” he says. “People aren’t going to spend millions to make the switch. They’ll just pick up a few print heads or print bars, attach them to their machines, and be done with it.”

Bright Future

Whether in lithography, flexography, or digital, boxmakers see their technologies as key players in a varied landscape.

Digital has a bright future in uses that demand eye-catching graphics and customization, Perreira says. “You’re not going to see digital replace the traditional brown box market for non-customer-facing packaging,” he says. “The digital market is definitely geared toward e-commerce, retail-ready, and POP markets, where it’s driving growth.”

Huston Patterson and Lewisburg Printing Co. is “confident in the future of print and print technologies, and litho is not going anywhere in the long term,” says Morelli. “Everybody has different needs, and there are needs for flexo, there are needs for digital, and there are needs for litho.”