BRANDS' DEMANDS

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BRANDS' DEMANDS Smart cold foiling for discerning Brand Owners

by

Glenn P Wood

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PRINT ENHANCEMENT Generation Z, in particular, is driving a requirement for more exciting decorative effects. Increasingly, conventional print fall short as the traditional effect generators of inks, varnishes, blind embossing, rainbow foil and sparkly metallic effects have all become mainstream.

3D EFFECTS These are still relatively new in the west. Kleenex tissues and Taitinger champagne used convex radial lenses to great effect on their folding cartons. These graphic accents, were achieved through the use of plastic laminates. The move away from plastic has adversely affected interest in these effects coupled with their rather dated appearance. It is now possible to achieve more complex 3D effects which encourage customer interaction at the point of sale but the hot foil stamping technology for applying these elements is slow and costly.

SECURITY Brand owners will rarely admit to the twin attacks on their brand integrity of counterfeiting and parallel trading. Both reduce the profitability of the brand and erode the public’s confidence in it. Any factor involved in the creation of effective packaging should include discretely but effectively allow the product to be identified as genuine, if not by the general public then by policing authorities.

COST

Brand owners, like everyone else, are cost conscious. Every effort must be made to look at all the factors contributing to packaging costs and minimise them. Component costs are often of minimal importance. Factors such as production and scrap rates, energy consumption, lead times and distribution costs also figure into the equation. Covid-19 has had a severe impact on workforce availabilities and shipping costs.

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Conclusion With these factors in mind, we hereby explore the use of cold foiling using a new generation of foils exhibiting 3D sculptures images (such as Cellini from Fresnels Innovations) with integrates print.

There are several benefits.

Because the foil itself contains multicolor print, no additional printing is necessary.

With a single transfer registered 3D imagery and accompanying graphic print care applied to the packaging substrate.

By such a process, both imagery and print can be delivered to the final packaging in many forms such as folding carton, clear plastic box, labels, shrink sleeves, flexible packs etc.

The use of a cold process makes application to heat sensitive substrate possible. Unlike fully metalised laminates and transfer material, the localised metalisation delivered by this process reduces the need for overprinting where the metal is not required.

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COLD FOIL First we make the registered image cold foil optimised for application by uv transfer to a substrate of your choice.

Construction:

Recyclable PET Carrier

Release layer Print layer Embossed layer Metal layer

Fig 1 The construction of new generation cold foil. Note registration marks which allow accurate registration between the 3D metallic images, registered image print and positional accuracy to the packaging substrate.

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ACTUAL

Fig 2 The foil, three tracks wide seen through the PET

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APPLICATION Metallic layer

UV adhesive printed Embossed layer

Substrate Print layer

Release layer

Recyclable PET

Fig 3. The uv adhesive is printed on the chosen substrate in the shape required. A sensor detects the registered image on the foil and applies it to the uv adhesive patch in perfect register.

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ACTUAL

Fig 4. The images from Fig 2 applied to clear plastic

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DELIVERY SYSTEMS EXAMPLES

Decorated boxes

Fig 5. The images from Fig 2 cold foil applied to carton board and made into folding cartons.

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Clear Packs

Fig 6. The images applied to flex and rigid transparent packaging material with additional printing so that metal is only part of the final graphic design.

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SHRINK SLEEVES

Fig 7. Cold foiling allows registered images 3D sculpting and print to be applied to heat sensitive shrink sleeve material.

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PRESSURE SENSITIVE LABELS

Fig 8. Many types of labels can be decorated with cold foil. The above are pressure sensitive stickers but in mold and wet glue are also possible.

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THE TECHNOLOGY OFFERED

1. System A - for the printing and embossing of cold foil in line.

Registration marks are added either by print of in the embossing so that the images can accurately be synchronised to the subsequent uv adhesive application.

2. System B - A printing machine* in which one station is converted to uv adhesive application. An integral module allows the cold foil to be unwound, applied to the substrate and waste rewound onto a take up spool.

Note: the type of print machine, number of colors, web width/sheet size, print speed etc to be specified by the client.