Why more and more companies are switching from flexography to single-pass digital printing for corrugated board: quality, flexibility, cost per run and speed compared.
Digital printing on corrugated board has no set-up costs, allows instant artwork changes and is cost-effective from one to thousands of pieces. Flexography is cheaper above 5,000-10,000 copies per item, but needs physical plates costing €200-800 per colour. Here is when to choose one or the other.
For decades flexography was the only option for printing corrugated board at industrial volumes. Today single-pass digital printing — like that of the EDM-650X — is changing the rules of the game. Let’s see why.
Flexography: pros and cons
Flexography uses flexible plates to transfer the ink onto the board.
Advantages:
- Very low cost per piece on huge runs (100,000+ pieces)
- High speed on uniform batches
- Mature, widely used technology
Disadvantages:
- High fixed costs: each plate costs hundreds of euros
- Long set-up: hours for each job change
- Material waste: hundreds of sheets for make-ready
- No flexibility: every variant needs a new plate
- Limited quality: low resolution, difficulty with gradients and photos
Single-pass digital printing: what changes
Single-pass technology uses fixed inkjet printheads (such as the HP PageWide heads of the EDM-650X) that print the whole width in a single pass, without moving the head back and forth.
Advantages:
- No plates — no fixed costs, cost-effective even on 10 pieces
- Instant job change — from one file to the next in seconds
- Photographic quality — 1200 × 1200 dpi, gradients, photos, sharp text
- Variable data — barcodes, QR codes, inline numbering
- Water-based inks — eco-friendly, solvent-free
- No make-ready waste — the first sheet is already good
- Sustainability — no solvents, no plates to dispose of
Head-to-head comparison
When to choose digital?
Digital printing is the right choice when:
- Runs are small or medium (from 1 to 10,000 pieces)
- You have many artwork variants (private label, personalised packaging)
- You need variable data (barcodes, QR codes, numbering)
- Photographic quality matters
- You want water-based, solvent-free, odourless inks
- You want to cut lead times and stock
The EDM-650X: the benchmark
The EDM-650X, distributed in Italy by Print Solution, is a single-pass printer with HP PageWide printheads, a print width from 60 to 180 cm and a paper pass from 120 to 250 cm. Speed up to 30 m/min, thickness up to 80 mm (direct printing on pre-die-cut boxes), pigmented water-based inks, eco-friendly and solvent-free.
Available with 2 to 6 printheads, the machine grows with your business.
Conclusion
Flexography remains competitive on long, uniform runs, but single-pass digital printing has opened up a completely new market: short personalised runs, variable data and photographic quality on corrugated board. If your business needs flexibility, now is the time to look at digital.
Related products
To move from flexography to digital printing, the EDM-650X is the industrial single-pass solution for corrugated board: zero set-up, instant artwork changes.
Discover all our digital packaging printing solutions.
