After the terrible flood of September 2022 that brought the Senigallia (Ancona – Italy) area to its knees, from the hinterland to the sea, and which compromised the entire plate production department of Isma Color, forcing Mario Mancini to start from scratch with a new fleet of machines, reorganizing in record time, also thanks to the solidarity of friends and colleagues from all over Italy, today the company is ready to challenge the future of flexo in the name of sustainability.
In his life Mario Mancini, founder and owner of Isma Color, has lived through many experiences, but he had never experienced a shock as terrible as the flood of September 2022. His company ended up under water and mud for over a meter and a half, compromising the entire flexo plate production department. Even today, the signs of that flood are visible on a column inside the department, left so on purpose so as not to forget.
“Luckily, the factory where we moved in 2011 had offices on the first floor, and this allowed us not to lose a day of work. During that period, I saw first-hand what solidarity means”, Mario Mancini tells us with emotion, “in a few hours we managed to empty and clean the warehouse, and my collaborators, who I consider a family, worked as a team with extraordinary availability, the technology suppliers made new systems available in record time and in the weeks in which we could not produce our plates, several colleagues and friends from companies like ours, from all over Italy, made themselves available to give me a hand, preparing for us the plates of our customers”, adds Mancini.
From offset to flexo, always pushing for innovation
For Mancini the post-flood restart brought back memories of the initial period of his entrepreneurial adventure, which started as Isma Color in 1996 for the flexo pre-press sector, but actually began as ISMA in 1991 in the garage of his home with 4 Mac workstations, a drum scanner and an image unit to produce offset printing plates, which for years represented the company’s core business. A pioneer since offset times, when Mancini was also involved in a paper converting company in the area, he was one of the first to introduce the Computer to Plate system, a true revolution at the time when printing plates were made with analog and manual assembly. With the same innovative spirit that has always distinguished this small but dynamic pre-press company, in 2003 the turning point came with the decision to abandon the offset path and focus decisively on the flexo world. Also, in this case the first investment concerned a Ctp Termoflex Creo 120×160 format, an innovative technology and unique installation in central Italy, an investment that allowed Isma Color to become, in a short time, a point of reference for flexo printing companies in the area.
From that moment on, growth was exponential, both from a technological and human resources point of view, until 2011 when the company moved to the new headquarters in Ostra (An), creating an expansion of spaces that allowed Isma Color to double the flexo production line, also installing a new distiller for the recovery and recycling of the solvent.
In 2013, Isma Color decided to include Kodak FlexCel NX technology with laminator in its production flow, confirming its trust in this technology in 2017 with the arrival of the CTP FlexCell NX Wide-C Imager, which allows the engraving of both offset plates with or without development and Til (Kodak Flexcel NX Thermal Imaging Layer) for polymers with Kodak Flexcel NX technology. Today this technology is offered by Miraclon.
The last two years have seen the machine park enriched with two XPS Crystal 5080 imagers with UV LED technology, which perform better in terms of speed, with significantly reduced consumption, a CDI Spark 5080, and a FlexLine Compact 520 which groups together washing, oven and imager in a single line.
Water-based technology for 100% sustainable flexo printing on paper
“We are investing heavily in sustainable production technologies and we have recently introduced the Asahi AWP 4260 PLF water washing system that uses the AWP CLFM “Road to Solvent ZERO” technology and thanks to which we aim to significantly reduce CO2 emissions during the flexo plate production process”, adds Mancini, specifying that 80% of the production of his systems is destined for the flexo printing market for paper packaging, a very widespread sector in the Marche region where Isma Color operates.
The AWP™-LOOP system is Asahi’s innovative solution for recovering and filtering wastewater produced by the AWP™- 4260 PLF developing machine; through this filtering unit it is possible to separate water, and a good part of the developer detergent, from the waste produced and reintroduce the clean solution into the cycle.
“I really believe in this technology that we are testing with truly surprising results and I am convinced that it represents the future of flexo printing on paper, for a process that is sustainable throughout its life cycle”, he concludes, recalling how, precisely on the occasion of last Drupa, at Asahi stand, Isma Color presented samples of paper shopping bags, made with the new water washing system, with truly exceptional quality and color yield.
Isma Color’s midsummer party
The first Friday of July is a date marked in red on the calendar of Isma Color, the flexo prepress service in the Marche region, which every year organizes an evening party “without a microphone”, since 2011, as the company founder Mario Mancini likes to point out during our recent visit to his company.
This year the evening was celebrated on July 5th and about a hundred guests including customers, suppliers, partners and friends, as well as the entire Isma Color staff, took part in the buffet set up in the company garden. “Born to thank all those who had worked on the construction of the new headquarters in the year of its inauguration, the midsummer party has become a much-anticipated event, a pleasant evening among friends, which we will continue to propose in the future”, says Mario Mancini, giving us an appointment for next year.
