Folding Cartons & Rigid Boxes for Leather Goods

How this item is used on the line

Fotoset has been printing since 1983 and is run by Santanu Roy. Work for leather goods is a standing part of the plant's output, and folding cartons and rigid boxes is produced as a repeat item rather than a one-off. That matters when the second and third runs have to sit next to the first without a visible difference.

In leather goods, folding cartons and rigid boxes is used for work of this kind:

• Footwear boxes, inner cartons and outer shippers
• Retail cartons for gloves, tools and hardware sets
• Gift and presentation boxes with a rigid construction
• Food and tea cartons with a food-grade board and coating

In this sector the printed set around the product usually includes the following, and Fotoset can supply all of it on one order rather than leaving the buyer to co-ordinate three suppliers:

• Hang tags on kraft or uncoated board, often die-cut to a leather or shield shape
• Swatch and material cards stating hide, tannage and finish
• Care and conditioning sheets packed with the product
• Rigid and folding boxes for gift and retail presentation

What we normally run

Size and format range: From 50 x 50 x 20 mm small cartons to shoe-box and master-carton formats. Die lines developed in-house or cut to the customer's supplied line. Kraft board 300 to 350 GSM is common, unlaminated, so the tag has the same matt hand as the leather.

Printing is by sheet-fed offset for process and spot colours, with silkscreen used where an opaque white, a metallic or a fluorescent is specified. Both processes are in the same building, so a combination job runs without moving the sheet.

• Sheet-fed offset on the printed face, with silkscreen for opaque and metallic areas
• Litho lamination to corrugated where transit strength is required
• Die-cutting, creasing, stripping and gluing

What the material has to survive

• Grey-back and white-back duplex board 250 to 450 GSM
• Folding box board and SBS art board for retail-facing cartons
• E, B and BE flute corrugated with a litho-laminated printed face
• Chipboard 1.2 to 2.5 mm formers for rigid box construction

Every finishing operation this item needs happens in-house: lamination, coating, die-cutting, creasing, punching, eyeletting and packing. Sheets are not sent out between operations, which removes the most common cause of delay and of damage on a folding cartons and rigid boxes job.

• Gloss, matt and soft-touch lamination, aqueous and UV coating
• Foil blocking, embossing and spot UV on the printed face
• Straight-line and crash-lock gluing, window patching
• Flat-packed bundling in counted quantities for the packing line

Compliance and labelling considerations

Fotoset prints the marks and declarations supplied by the customer and does not alter them. Artwork is checked before plate-making and any mark that will not reproduce cleanly is queried in writing. For leather goods, the content that commonly appears on this item includes:

• Material declaration distinguishing genuine leather from split, bonded and coated finishes
• Country of origin marking
• CE marking where the item is classified as protective equipment
• REACH-related declarations supplied by the customer and printed as given
• Recycling marks on the packaging

Languages

English is standard, with German, French, Spanish and Italian added for European retail. Indian domestic supply adds Hindi and Bengali.

Ordering pattern

• European buying cycles drive orders ahead of spring and autumn ranges
• Gifting seasons generate rigid box and presentation packaging runs
• Trade fair sample sets are ordered at short notice

Preparing artwork

• Press-ready PDF, version 1.4 or later, with 3 mm bleed on all four sides and crop marks outside the trim.
• Native Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW files accepted, with fonts converted to outlines and linked images embedded.
• Images at 300 dpi at final printed size. Line art and barcode artwork supplied as vector wherever possible.
• Colour built in CMYK. Spot colours called out by Pantone reference in the file and in the purchase order.
• Die line supplied on a separate named layer, in a spot colour set to overprint, not on the artwork layer.