How We Deliver for India's Leading Brands

12 packaging variants, each with a distinct colour scheme, required simultaneous pre-press, plate making, and press scheduling. The brand needed a premium feel, soft-touch lamination, spot UV on logos, within a 10-working-day window that included finishing and dispatch.

• All 12 files pre-flighted and approved within 6 hours of brief receipt
• 48 CMYK plates made via CTP in a single overnight run
• Press scheduled in batches, similar colour profiles printed back-to-back to reduce wash time
• Soft-touch BOPP lamination applied within 24 hours of press
• Spot UV, die-cutting, and gluing completed on a parallel finishing line

• Board: 350 GSM SBS (Solid Bleached Sulphate)
• Carton style: Straight tuck end, reverse tuck end (mix per SKU)
• Finish: Soft-touch BOPP lamination + spot UV on brand logo
• Colour: CMYK + 1 Pantone spot per variant
• Barcode: EAN-13 verified to GS1 standards

Barcode panels were just 3mm wide, below the standard minimum for reliable printing without specialised setup. The client also needed food-safe ink certification for a nutraceutical product, and drug labelling text had to be verified against the approved artwork before plates were made.

• Pre-press team reviewed barcode placement and applied bar width reduction (BWR) to compensate for dot gain at that panel width
• Food-safe UV-curable inks specified and sourced before press schedule was confirmed
• Drug labelling text, batch format, and regulatory logos verified against approved artwork, discrepancy found and corrected before plate making
• Every sheet rub-tested before dispatch, ink must not transfer to product or hands
• 100% barcode scan verification run on final batch

• Board: 350 GSM SBS with heat-seal coating applied in-house
• Ink: UV-curable, food-safe, low-migration
• Die-cut: ±0.2mm tolerance, verified with test cuts before run
• Barcode: Data Matrix + EAN-13, ISO 15416 verified
• Testing: Rub (dry and wet), peel strength, barcode scan

A 200-page perfect-bound book in 3 working days. Cover and text needed to be printed on separate machines simultaneously, lamination applied same day as cover printing, and binding completed the following morning. Zero tolerance for colour mismatch between text and cover.

• Cover and text scheduled on two presses simultaneously, Day 1 press run
• Matte lamination on covers done same evening, dry overnight
• Spot UV on logo applied on Day 2 morning
• Text folded and gathered Day 2 afternoon
• Perfect binding completed Day 3 morning, 500 copies in 4 hours
• Trimmed, QC checked, and dispatched Day 3 afternoon

• Cover: 350 GSM gloss art, matte BOPP lamination, spot UV
• Text: 130 GSM gloss art, 4-colour offset throughout
• Binding: Perfect bind, PUR adhesive, 11mm spine
• Spine: Title and year printed in white on orange panel
• Trim size: 210 × 280 mm (A4 portrait)

11,200 individual printed pieces across 14 component types, all needing to match each other in colour when assembled in a store. Large format posters, shelf-edge strips, danglers, header cards, and brochures all sharing the same brand colour palette, printed across multiple press runs.

• Colour profiling session run before production, all 14 components profiled against a single spectrophotometric target
• Press OKay sheet kept as reference for each press run, density matched at start of each new component
• QC batch check every 500 sheets, densitometer reading logged
• Packing line set up to collate by kit, each store's 14 components packed together with dispatch label
• Full dispatch in 6 working days from files approved

• Delta-E (ΔE) target: below 2.0 across all components
• Spectrophotometer readings taken at make-ready and mid-run on every component
• All 14 component types achieved ΔE below 2, within acceptable colour matching tolerance
• Brand's critical Pantone colour verified by spectrophotometer on first sheet of each run

Food-safe UV-curable inks have a different colour gamut to conventional inks. Matching 38 existing SKUs, many with brand-critical Pantone colours, within a Delta-E of 1.5 required a structured ink-matching programme before any production could begin.

• Spectrophotometric readings taken from existing printed samples, Lab values recorded for every SKU
• Food-safe UV ink system selected and profiled against the existing colour data
• Three press proofs run on representative SKUs, ΔE measured after each proof
• Ink formulations adjusted until all critical colours within ΔE 1.5
• Full production run initiated only after brand sign-off on proofs
• FSSAI-compliant ink certification provided with delivery documentation

• Ink migration is a real risk in food packaging, not a theoretical one. Mineral oils from conventional inks can transfer to food through packaging walls
• Food-safe inks do not mean colour compromise, with proper profiling, the match can be tighter than expected
• The cost of proofing before a full migration is always lower than the cost of a mis-matched shelf range
• Read more about food packaging ink compliance in the The Print Codex →