This year marks the 50th anniversary celebration for the DuPont™ Cyrel® brand, which introduced its first photopolymer plate to the flexographic printing industry in 1974. Since then, Cyrel® has continued to break new ground, setting the pace of innovation in the industry.
“This is an extraordinary moment for DuPont and the entire Cyrel® team. Throughout this journey, we have brought countless innovations to the market and have always prioritised developments in collaboration with our customers,” commented Tucker Norton, Global Business Director, DuPont™ Cyrel® Flexographic Solutions.
The past 50 years have been marked by unprecedented achievements. For instance, in the 1990s, DuPont launched the Cyrel® Digital Imager (CDI), allowing prepress teams globally to migrate from an analog workflow, to a modern, digital Computer to Plate workflow.
In 2000, DuPont became one of the first flexographic plate manufacturers to introduce a thermal workflow, the Cyrel® FAST system, which allowed flexographic plates to be processed without the use of chemical solvents.
The last decade has been marked by a period of intense innovation as many additional technology solutions have been brought to market by DuPont. For example, the Cyrel® EASY Plate, introduced in 2015, is a flat top dot directly in the plate, which simplified the pre-press process and allowed customers to achieve increased productivity and consistency. Later, DuPont introduced Cyrel® EASY-R Plates, which represented an even more advanced family of plate formulations, building on the Cyrel® EASY platform, further advancing performance on press and making the plates even easier to handle in the plate room.
On the corrugated side, Cyrel® DLC plates launched in 2019. Developed specifically for printing on recycled board, this plate addressed a need to achieve excellent quality printing and less board crush.
More recently, DuPont launched the Cyrel® Lightning Plate series for both the solvent and thermal platemaking workflow, optimised for a UV-LED exposure.
Norton commented, “For more than 50 years, our team of passionate flexo experts have worked tirelessly to bring technological advances to the packaging and printing industry. We are committed to continuous innovation and look forward to perfecting flexography together with our partners and customers in the next decade.”
