There are many ways to level up your product with custom packaging. From industrial to retail, with expert packaging printing services, you can cover all of your empty space with branded colors and designs utilizing the best printing technology for your goals.
At Progress Container, we offer packaging printing services including flexographic, lithographic, and digital printing to fit your vision for customization and your product needs. With the right printing technology, you can ensure your design meets set standards in a range of industries that include pharmaceutical, eCommerce, apparel, produce, perishables, and more.
By applying a variety of materials including corrugated, plastic, and foam, our packaging printing services will help you achieve your design goals depending on your order size, urgency, and budget. No matter the case, our dedicated team of graphic designers partner with the structural design team to help determine the right direction.
1. Flexographic Printing
You might first consider flexographic packaging for your product needs as it is commonly used for industrial, tertiary, and retail applications. This technology uses flexible photopolymer printing plates to print a single set design for all of your packaging; each plate prints one color. Traditionally, flexo printing is best for one to multiple colors for printing vector images (non-photographic) and lower resolution raster images.
With our Gӧpfert RDC Evolution HBL 8-color printer and die cutter, you get a cost-effective solution for eCommerce with custom printing on the interior. This new technology provides the highest quality flexo print in the world. It allows for up to seven colors on an uncoated substrate, and six colors plus varnish on a coated substrate, of a high-resolution photo and spot color vector images.
There are a few key considerations to keep in mind when deciding whether this packaging printing service is fit for your needs. Flexographic packaging tends to be costly for short print runs, and turnaround time on plate and cutting dies can take three to five days. Overall, flexographic printing runs at high speed with accurate and consistent results. You’ll get the most out of flexographic printing with high volume orders as they are done in a single pass, making it very efficient, cost-effective, and adept at minimizing waste. Dryers and fast-drying ink make it ideal for urgent projects and help decrease production time.
2. Offset Printing Services
Lithographic printing, also called offset printing, is a traditional printing option for retail and luxury packages that requires custom printing plates. By using a positive and negative printing plate, the inked design is then transferred (or “offset”) from a rubber sheet to a paper liner board. The printing can be done on a laminated top sheet that is applied to a single-face corrugated sheet (litho lamination) or printed onto a label that is adhered to double-faced corrugated packaging (litho mount).
When deciding on your preferred packaging printing service, there are a few elements to keep in mind when considering offset printing services. For every new design, product, and promotion, you’ll need to create a new plate, and with an expensive setup process, costs can add up. There is very little room for error, and a longer turnaround can be expected with the time needed to be spent on prep and proofing. If you are looking to stand out with foil stamping, embossing, spot gloss, or other embellishments, however, offset printing is the go-to printing technology for you.
As a cost-effective packaging solution for large orders, offset printing runs without losing quality and makes it easy to print accurate, complex, colorful high-quality images. A larger color gamut, along with spot colors, can further extend your image options. Offset printing generates large areas of a single color smoothly and is great for a single design. There are also prep costs associated with offset printing services, but they are traditionally less than the flexographic printing process. With efficient production, offset printing runs faster than digital printing, although production of the lithographic plates required makes it slower for first-time orders.
3. Digital Printing
As technology continues to evolve, digital printing only grows in popularity as quality and cost improve. By using electronics files to print images directly onto corrugated packaging with a single pass, digital printing opens up endless customization opportunities for packaging. The flexibility to upload detailed, high-resolution custom designs directly to the press without the need for printing plates makes digital printing ideal for retail and luxury packaging.
Minimal setup is required for digital printing, and it is known to be a faster alternative for small orders. Added turnaround time is to be expected, however, factoring in demand and shipping. If your goal is to scale your printing production, be sure to keep in mind that digital inks tend to be more expensive. Digital printing still remains behind in color accuracy compared to offset and flexographic printing. Rather than printing one color at a time, however, digital printing frees you from the limitations of print plates — delivering the full spectrum of color in one go.
As a cost-effective printing solution for small orders, digital printing allows for print-on-demand and is a great go-to option for prototypes, package samples, seasonal promotions, and one-off packaging. Digital printing is a sustainable printing option, as you can print what you want, when you need it. With the capability to print detailed, multi-colored, high-resolution orders, digital printing remains a great option for printing orders consistently, and accurately.
Explore Customer-Centric Packaging Printing Services
At Progress Container, we understand that first impressions matter. Not only do your products need to arrive undamaged, but your package needs to deliver an unforgettable unboxing experience. That’s why when it comes to your design solution, our in-house graphic designers always take a holistic approach. We identify supply-chain factors, consider consumers and distribution, and align with the structural design to deliver branded packaging that fits your timeline.
With more than 100 combined years of experience across various industries, our expert packaging printing services know how to execute eCommerce and retail-ready packaging to safely, transport, display, and represent your brand.
Communicate your product’s value with packaging designs that demonstrate your brand today.