Also known as cylinder. For printing on plastic films, first need to engrave artwork into copper or steel cylinder one color one plate. For example, if there are 5 colors in the artwork, at least five plates/cylinders are needed, or if opaque colors needed, one more plate for white color is needed.
Plate fee is the cost for engraving artwork into plate and the material cost of the plate. And the plate cost is different according different size of the pouches. Usually plate fee for a very large or very small pouches will be much higher than a normal size pouch. As each printing machine has a minimum size requirement on the plate.