SUPPORTING flexographic printers throughout Southern Africa, and even as far afield as Mauritius, the Barkev group boasts an impressive line-up of principals, including Scapa mounting tapes, Swedev steel doctor blades, Flexo Concepts plastic doctor blades and Recyl anilox cleaners. In addition to offering these high-quality brands, Barkev directors and staff, led by CEO Kevin Allan, offer service excellence and technical competence.

Scapa: plate-mounting excellence

Among Barkev’s principals, Scapa is a leading supplier of adhesive tapes and films for the printing and graphics industry with some 90 years’ production experience.

Today’s flexographic printers constantly seek ways to perfect print quality and improve process efficiency and speed – essential when it comes to meeting customers’ increasingly stringent demands, particularly in flexible packaging markets.

For all these challenges, Scapa’s highly-specialised adhesive tapes provide an answer. For example, Scapa’s Exafit HP tapes give a reliable bond to the plate/cylinder enabling longer, faster print runs with improved printing definition and reduced dot gain.

Exafit HP is available in a range of hardness levels and the use of reactive foam meets the needs of the most demanding print jobs.

Thanks to its high performance, a faster dynamic response is achieved, whatever the hardness, and improved resilience results in improved absorption of mechanical vibration and substrate variability. It also provides consistency of performance whatever the machine setting conditions.

A flexible and smooth liner provides easy removability and improved handling performance and accurate positioning, while a transparent liner allows for clear and quick identification.

The latest transparent PP embossed filmic liner is easy to remove and reposition. It not only reduces the number of air bubbles but also allows them to be removed with ease. These benefits are essential in reducing set-up times during the crucial mounting process.

A new generation of PE compressible foam ensures top-quality printing and longer, faster print runs. Process efficiency is increased as fewer foam changes and adjustments are required during the print run. The higher resilience of PE also absorbs tolerances caused by variable substrate thickness and machine vibration by reducing the bouncing effect on the print result.

With the addition of five new foam hardness levels, the Exafit HP range provides perfect results for any print job, such as consistent contrast and detail over long print runs, and the preservation of colour density and intensity.

Swedev blades meet all requirements

Produced in Sweden, 98% of Swedev doctor blades are exported to around the globe, including Southern Africa where Barkev is the local distributor.

Under the well-respected brand of SWED/CUT, Swedev’s metal doctor blades are made of genuine Swedish steel, which, the company claims, is the best available worldwide. This exceptionally high-quality steel means that Swedev can deliver precision-made and totally-reliable blades.

In addition Swedev, in co-operation with printers, has developed a patented surface coating method that reduces friction and increases the blade’s lifespan.

The comprehensive SWED/CUT range includes all types of blades, from those made of plastic or composite materials to blades made of extremely high-alloyed and corrosion-free steel, which is then ground, in some cases surface coated, and refined for various applications.

Products are primarily designed for small, highly-demanding niche markets, where superior results are all that matters. Such niche activities place great demands on raw materials, which has led to steel producers specialising in advanced steel grades and products for widely varied areas and specialist products such as doctor blades.

Recyl receives safety award

ANOTHER Barkev principal, French company, Recyl, provides cleaning products and equipment for flexo, gravure and offset printers. Whether cleaning anilox rolls or plates, Recyl offers an extensive range of products.

Because safety is of the utmost importance, Recyl recently implemented a new pumping and weighing installation to automate and monitor the manufacture of its well-known Cobra product that cleans and restores anilox volume.

This development, undertaken in partnership with Lutz Jesco, a supplier of pumping equipment, not only brought about improved safety during the manufacture of Cobra solutions, it also resulted in greatly enhanced product quality.

The project was subsequently entered in the 2019 Chemistry Initiatives award programme and Reycl and Lutz Jeso jointly took first prize for the best safety device.

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