From barcodes to holographic film labels, the times when labels served only to tell what a product was, and nothing more, are definitely long gone. Labels have become an important feature of marketing strategies as a means of product deferentiation.

The labelling sector faces particular challenges, such as extremely high requirements for images and intricate complexity of designs, as well as the need to process new materials. New laws and regulations, along with the need to display multilingual content, demand that space on labels be used with the utmost efficiency. The prospects are promising: the market for self adhesive labels alone is growing by an average of 5% worldwide, and in hot spots like Eastern Europe by as much as 19% each year.

Those who want to stay competitive in the highly dynamic label printing market have to deliver high-quality print results and react quickly to customer requests. Designs, and especially frequent design changes, are very demanding. One label alone may contain fine colour gradients and ornate lines, along with saturated full-tone areas.

For optimum print quality, all the steps of the process must be designed to work together. Plate mounting tapes play a crucial role in ensuring that this is the case and tesa's product assortment for flexographic label printing offers tapes with the right foam hardness and adhesive properties for all printing techniques. The amount of physical and technical know-how contained in each plate mounting tape is not immediately apparent, but is nonetheless hugely significant.

The carefully formulated special adhesive masses, which enable simple, rapid, and low-residue removal of even the thinnest printing plates, but adhere securely to both the cylinder and the plate during printing, are just one example of this.

The most important element of the tapes is their foam backing. SEM images show that the closed foam cells in tesa@ Softprint plate mounting tapes tapes have an extremely uniform cell structure. The result is even distribution of pressure and a consistency of foam cells that is precise to one thousandth of a centimetre.