Printing, lamination and silkscreen capabilities under one roof

Photography

Product photography is shot in-house for catalogues, header cards, brochures and calendar imagery. Gloves, footwear, tools and packed products are shot on a controlled background so a range photographed across several sessions still looks like one set.

Photography here is a production step in a printing plant, not a studio service sold on its own. The purpose is a usable separation, not an art print.

Design and artwork

Layout, typesetting and die-line development. Multi-language instruction text is set from files supplied by the customer, in European and Indian scripts, with the correct diacritics and the correct hyphenation for each language.

Where a customer supplies press-ready files, artwork work is limited to a pre-press check: bleed, trim, overprint, minimum line weight, reversed text size, barcode dimensions and the resolution of every standard mark.

Colour scanning

Scanning, separation and correction, with proofs produced on the production stock rather than on a generic proofing paper. A proof on 300 GSM kraft board and the same file proofed on coated art board are two different results, and the buyer should approve the one that will be printed.

Approved proofs are retained and referenced against the printed sheet at the press.

Offset printing

Sheet-fed offset for tags, header cards, labels, leaflets, cartons and catalogues. Process colour with additional spot colours where a brand colour has to hold across reprints and across years.

Ink density is recorded during the run so the next run has a target rather than an impression.

The press runs computerised ink control with an ink density regulator, so density is held across the run and repeatable on reprints.

Lamination

Thermal and wet film lamination in gloss, matt and soft-touch, single or both sides, plus aqueous and UV coating, full-surface or spot.

Lamination decides whether a hang tag survives a humid container and a warehouse. Barcode fields are kept free of high-gloss varnish so a scanner reads first time.

Die-cutting and punching

Platen die-cutting and punching is carried out in-house. Hang tags, header cards, labels and folding cartons are cut, creased and punched on the same site as the presses, so a register problem or a punch position problem is corrected against the printed sheet rather than reported back from another factory.

Cutting formes are made to the approved dieline, and euro slots, round holes and eyelet positions are checked on the first cut sheet against the approved sample before the run continues.

Silkscreen printing

Screen preparation, stencil exposure and printing in-house. Silkscreen lays a much heavier ink film than offset, which is what makes opaque whites, metallics and fluorescents possible, and what allows printing onto polyester, polypropylene, PVC and rigid sheet.

Ink adhesion is tested on the actual production substrate before the run, not assumed from a previous job.

Finishing

Die-cutting, kiss-cutting, creasing, perforating, folding, gluing, stapling, saddle stitching, round-hole and euro-slot punching, metal eyeletting, stringing, counting, banding and packing.

Because finishing is on the same site as the presses, an order leaves as a finished item ready for the packing line rather than as printed sheets that still need two other suppliers.