July 30, 2018
Pops of bright colors, crystal clear images, and beautifully scattered logos showcasing prominent and well-loved brands—these are the new packaging normal. Underneath the stylish branding, at the heart of it all remains your standard brown box—something that falls just short of a fossil in today’s world. Printed boxes, full-color displays, and specialty packaging are not the competitive edge anymore for converters—they are the expectation. With these requirements come added costs, increased labor and machine time, and potential yield loss in the finished product. Converters are constantly searching for ways to appease their clients’ aesthetic eye while increasing efficiency and lowering costs.
Enter corrugated preprinted sheets. Preprinted sheets directly from the corrugator add value into converters’ already tight operations through cost reductions, convenience, and delivering a custom product that is ready for end use.
Corrugators equipped with inline flexo print capability can offer full-coverage flood-coat print or random repeating logos and pattern designs directly to the sheets during the corrugation process. When speed to market is an issue, preprinted sheets are a good option since they arrive at your dock ready for die cutting and final passes, allowing the operations team to deal with fewer setups and increased throughput. The potential for strength degradation and flute compression is also minimized with the reduction of machine passes, so customers do not have to incorporate additional weight into the sheet to compensate for yield loss.
These preprinted sheets can be used for a number of applications, including specialty packaging and point-of-purchase displays, ultimately enhancing the overall brand image or unboxing experience. Purchasing preprinted sheets directly from the corrugator saves converters money through reduced inventory and waste, and added machine time. Box plants can save on print die and extra ink costs, as this is handled at the corrugator. Waste from leftover ink and excess trim is also eliminated.
Quick turnarounds on custom color matching help to ease customer operations even further. With the majority of PMS and GCMI colors available, along with a variety of substrates accessible for printing, converters have a wide array of choices to design their unique product. With guaranteed color consistency, often less than 2 delta-E (dE), both box plants and the end retailer can have peace of mind knowing their branding will remain identical—no matter the application or substrate.
Along with the wide variety of color choices, there is an array of coverage options available to suit your customers’ specific design needs. The most popular selection is single-bump print, in which one layer of 100 percent full-coverage ink is applied to the liner. Single-bump full-coverage can be successfully overprinted as well, which can add that extra pop to customer logos. Single-bump with varnish, in which one layer of 100 percent full-coverage ink is applied and one layer of water-based varnish is coated on top, is another popular choice. The varnish helps to prevent rub-off and seals in the ink, so there are no concerns about splotching or fading. It can also enhance the brightness of the print. Double-bump print is another option; with it, two layers of 100 percent full-coverage ink are applied to the liner. The result is a brighter and more opaque application.
Along with the full-coverage options come both logo-print and reverse-print capabilities. With logo print, a special sleeve with a customer-designed logo is utilized during the corrugation process, and the repeating pattern is printed directly on the liner. Reverse print follows the same concept, except all of the board is printed with the exception of the logo or design, introducing more color into the sheet.
Another capability is adding digital print or a litho label to the opposite side of the preprinted sheet. This can further highlight your customer’s product and brand image while adding only a few extra machine setups. This particular option is very beneficial for specialty packaging designs where both the inside and outside of the box are utilized. However, flexo print adds a lot of color to the design with only a fraction of the cost of digital ink or a litho label.
With the rapidly growing e-commerce and subscription box industries, today’s consumer receives more boxes than ever before. Both big-box retailers and e-commerce aficionados are upping their packaging game to enhance the overall brand experience, which means more color, designs, and logos. For converters, the options are almost limitless. Partnering with print-ready corrugators is one way to reduce overall costs, increase convenience, and deliver a consistent, custom-printed sheet ready for end use. Continuously increasing efficiency is a trend all manufacturers can agree on, and corrugated preprinted sheets are a cost-effective way to do just that.
Holly Kobelt is customer service–color specialist at Corrugated Supplies Co. She can be reached at 708-625-3227 or hkobelt@vancraft.com.
Cassi Malone is strategic account manager at Corrugated Supplies Co. She can be reached at 708-625-3244 or cmalone@vancraft.com.
