Flexography has more than 100 years of history and its origin in “letterpress printing” which was invented in the mid 15th century by Johannes Gutenberg.

Flexography’s core benefit over other measures of printing is its inherent versatility with respect to substrate surfaces. Especially on inferior surfaces flexography yields superior print results.

Today’s main applications are in all forms of packaging and materials: foils, polyurethane films, carton, corrugated, brown and white, paper, bags, sacks, tissue, non-wovens, …

A general differentiation is made whether respective printing presses are web- or sheet- fed flexo-print presses.

The technical term “flexography” was derived from “flexible” as the image carrier (printing plate) is made from an elastomeric polymer which, by nature, is a “flexible material”.
 
Many types of printing plates are available ranging from 0,76 mm up to 6 mm thickness and different imaging and processing  methods are commonly applied to “engrave” the relief surface structure into the polymeric plate material.