Written by Pedro Chaves
Creative Director & Marketing Specialist, Esko
If you blink, you might miss the sleepy calm of Itzehoe, a northern German town best known these days for quietly shaping the global future of flexo.
Let’s wind it back. The year was 1995. Inside a modest building with more engineers than chairs, something extraordinary happened. Something that sounded a lot like a laser powering up. Something that sounded like the future.
The team was small and unruly. But their ideas were bold, dynamic, and brilliant.
This year, we’re celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Esko CDI, the world’s first computer-to-plate (CtP) imager for flexographic printing.
A Garage Band of Laser Scientists
The roots of CDI go deeper than ’95. Back in the ’70s, a young engineer named Jens Scheel was already busy reshaping print tech from the inside out. His machines engraved wallpaper cylinders with big, cumbersome CO₂ lasers. By the late ’80s, the company had been renamed Baasel-Scheel Lasergraphics. A mouthful, but a meaningful one.
Then Dupont showed up with a challenge: “What if we could expose photopolymer plates directly, without film?”
The first experiments melted the plates. Literally.
That was just the beginning. By 1993, a working CDI prototype sat humming quietly at Dupont HQ in Wilmington, Delaware.
It wasn’t magic. It was chemistry, physics, and persistence.
But Why Itzehoe?
Why not Berlin? Why not Hamburg?
Because innovation doesn’t always come from the big cities. Sometimes it comes from a tiny place. One with a laser lab that turns out to belong to a guy with tattoos and no shoes, even in February.
A guy who bikes in through the mist and walks barefoot into a lab full of lasers.
Itzehoe had the people who weren’t afraid of the messiness of invention. The ones who welcomed wild ideas and sleepless nights.
It was science fiction that eventually became reality.
1.5 Square Meters an Hour
The first CDIs weren’t fast. They exposed about 1.5 m² per hour at only 2100 ppi. But they were accurate. Reliable. Repeatable. And they opened the door to flexo’s modern age.
Demand grew, and so did ambition.
By 2010, Esko introduced HD Flexo. Suddenly flexo wasn’t the “compromise” process anymore. Its target was offset quality, and it hit its mark.
By the time Crystal Screening and Quartz arrived, flexo hadn’t just caught up. It was leading.
From One a Month to One a Day
Back then, a single CDI might take weeks to build. Now, we can ship more than one a day.
What hasn’t changed is the essence of the innovation birthed in Itzehoe. The same spirit that made engineers say “sure, let’s try that,” is still here. Only now, the halls are quieter. Not because there’s less to do but because the machines run smoother, the process runs tighter, and the chaos of curiosity found its rhythm.
A Toast in the Laser Lab
Thirty years in and CDI is still the heart of the operation. It’s not just a machine. It’s a milestone. One built on science, perseverance, and the chill of cold German mornings.
And whether you joined us as a customer, an engineer, or whatever your connection may have been to a small laser lab in Itzehoe, this milestone belongs to all of us.
Here’s to thirty more.
