Printed Cardboard Packaging – What Are Your Options?

Your brand – and the perception of it – is crucial to your business.

It helps to win new business. It helps you maintain relationships and customers. It makes your products recognisable in a sea of rival and alternative products. It gives you a point of difference.

Ultimately, it can be the difference between driving sales or losing market share. Getting your packaging artwork wrong can be disastrous.

Your packaging has a crucial role to play in this. In fact, printed cardboard packaging is not only a way to protect your products whilst they make their way through the shipping and transportation process. Increasingly, it is a way of presenting your products, advertising your business and increasing brand awareness too.

To achieve this, and to make your packaging look as eye-catching as possible, there are a number of different print options available. Each print technique has a range of benefits (and limitations) specific to it however.

Choosing the right one can make a significant difference to the success of your packaging.

Silk screen printing is one the oldest and most basic forms of printing. Yet it can still be used for printed cardboard packaging.

It is a print technique that makes use of a mesh to transfer ink onto a material. Despite its’ simplicity, this technique can produce excellent quality single or two colour images.

Silk screen printing makes use of stencil (or multiple stencils if using more than one colour in the artwork).

This sees a design imposed onto a screen of polyester or a fine mesh. Blank areas are coated with an impermeable substance so that the ink cannot transfer through, whereas the image area and is made of porous material which allows for full ink coverage on the substrate.

During printing, the ink is forced through the screen which is mounted on a frame using a fill blade (or squeegee).

When being used for packaging materials the board is generally screen printed prior to its conversion into a box or display. A clear benefit of this method is that it can product a higher resolution image than many other techniques.

Due to the setup time and manual nature of the process, this form of printing is rarely used for corrugated packaging (unless very low runs are required). It is also only really suitable for transit packaging that carries basic branding, due the limitations on colours.

Saying that, this method is ideal for printing Correx® packaging or protective cases, which are generally required in lower volumes.

Flexography (flexo) is a form of printing that which makes use of a flexible relief plate. It is often referred to as being a modern day version of the letter press.

One of the main benefits of flexographic printing it that it can be used to print on to a wide range of substrates (materials) including plastic, foil, brown paper, cardboard and other packaging materials.

Flexographic printing begins with the development of a flexographic plate. The technique makes use of plates that have with raised images. Only the raised images come in contact with the substrate during printing and deposit ink onto the material, thus generating the printed image.

Flexographic plates are made of a flexible material such as plastic, rubber or UV sensitive polymer (photopolymer). This is so that the plates can be attached to a roller or cylinder for ink application.

Flexographic inks unlike those used in lithography, generally have a low viscosity. This enables faster drying and, as a result, faster production, which results in lower costs.

This also helps flexo to be suitable for use in the food industry. In fact, press speeds of up to 600 meters per minute can be achievable now with modern printers.

Whilst flexographic printing can be used for full colour printed cardboard packaging, this method lends itself more to 1 – 3 colour, bold graphics in high volumes.

Lithography is the most commonly used, high-volume commercial printing technique available.

The image that will be printed is transferred from a computer onto a printing plate and is cut into the plate using a laser.

This ensures accurate reproduction of the image onto the plate and providing a high quality result. It also allows for full colour, photographic quality images.

The process is based on the repulsion of oil and water. The image that is to be printed is coated with ink from rollers within the printing press. The areas that are not to be printed attract a coating of water and as such repel any ink and remain unprinted.

Lithographic printing can be achieved on a traditional printing press or on a sheet-feeder. The benefit of using a sheet feeder is that the material can be fed into the press one sheet at a time at very high speed to achieve quick results.

However, this makes it unsuitable for printed cardboard packaging. Whilst cardboard is a strong and versatile material, it can be difficult to print directly on to due to its’ thickness and also the ridged surface (created by the fluting).

As such, when used for packaging, the design is printed onto paper which is then laminated onto the face of the corrugated board (hence being commonly referred to as “litho laminated”).

This not only produces a better print quality, but also does not affect the fluting or structure which may be altered if passed through a press.

Digital printing is a method of printing that uses a digital based image and prints directly onto the chosen material.

Rather than making use of traditional printing press techniques, digital printing requires large format laser or ink-jet printers which deposit pigment or toner on to a wide range of materials that require printing.

As such, there is no mechanical set up associated with digital printing as there is with more traditional techniques such as Flexography and Lithography.

Instead the images are sent digitally to the printer from design software. The means images can easily be amended to ensure the best result even once printing has begun.

Digital printing is an option for projects that need to be completed quickly. Whilst the cost-per-page of printing can often be higher than traditional techniques, this cost if offset for low volume runs by there being no mechanical set up costs or need to purchase / replace printing plates.

As well as the cost benefit and the speed at which images can be printed, digital print can also help with image quality.

Due to the non-contact nature of digital printing, there is a significantly reduced risk of image distortion which is something that can happen often in analogue techniques.

In addition digital printers do not need the material to be tightly held or stretched during the printing process meaning that more materials can be printed onto and giving designers more choice.

As with litho printed cardboard packaging, photographic quality images are easily achieved, although pantone colours and metallic tend not to be supported.

It does allow for changing designs and dynamic elements however, such as changing promotional codes or customer personalisation.

Despite having all of this information, it can still be difficult to decide which one would be best for your specific application.

As a general rule, screen printing would not be suitable for corrugated packaging unless you are looking at very low volumes (e.g. under 100), and only require basic one or two colour graphics.

It is however an ideal choice for printing Correx®, plastic packaging or even protective cases.

Flexographic printing is ideal for printed cardboard packaging that requires bold, striking graphics.

This makes it a good choice for transit packaging, but less so for retail applications. It is reasonably cost effective regardless of print run, but the cost of the plates need to be justified (ruling out very low volumes).

Litho laminated printing is the best choice if you need the highest quality print.

Photos and intricate graphics can be easily reproduced, making it perfect for retail packs and POS. However, the cost of the plates and setup mean lead times are longer than other methods, and that it is not cost effective for low volume runs.

And finally, digital printed packaging offers an alternative to lithographic (and flexo) methods.

It can be cost effective in very low volumes (due to no printing plates being used and minimal setup costs), but due to the print speed is not suitable for high volumes. It can produce results comparable to lithographic, including photographic imagery, and can be used for personalising packs to (as elements can change between individual prints).

All four of these printing options can be sourced directly from GWP Packaging and applied to your packaging.

A team of experienced staff will be able to offer impartial advice on the printed packaging option that is right for your business based on a range of factors (budget, structural design, end user etc.), as well as ensuring that your products gain the attention they deserve.

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