Industry — printed packaging and tagging

Packaging and tag printing for Tea & Agro

Kolkata is a tea city and Fotoset has printed for the trade for decades: sample tags, lot tags, packet labels, cartons and chest marks.

Fotoset produces this work from one plant in Kolkata, with photography, design and artwork, colour scanning, offset printing, lamination and silkscreen printing in-house. One vendor covers the printed matter for the whole consignment, from the sewn label inside the product to the mark on the master carton.

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Image placeholderPrinted tags, labels and cartons produced for tea and agro, laid out for inspection

Packaging and tagging requirements in this sector

Tea sample tags with ruled fields for lot number, grade, number of bags, total weight and date of packing
Packet labels and laminated wrappers for retail tea packs
Cartons and inner cartons for packet and bag ranges
Chest, sack and shipping marks for auction and export lots
Barcode and weight labels for retail units

How the work is produced

A tea sample tag is a small job with no tolerance for error. The tag identifies a lot moving through a broker, a buyer and an auction, and the ruled fields have to be wide enough to write on with a ballpoint. Fotoset prints these in bi-colour and four-colour versions, at 55 x 65 mm, on board that takes ink from a pen without feathering.

Retail tea packaging moves the other way: heavy solid colours, metallic panels and gold rules that must hold across reprints. Solid grounds of this kind are where silkscreen is used alongside offset.

Weight, batch and best-before fields are left clear on the printed label so the packer can overprint them on the line. Fotoset positions and sizes those fields to the packer's coder, not to the artwork designer's preference.

Regulatory and compliance marks that appear on this printed matter

Fotoset prints the marks the customer supplies and does not alter them. Where a mark arrives as a low-resolution raster image it is queried in writing before plate-making, because a soft or broken standard mark is a compliance problem, not a print preference.

FSSAI licence number and food declarations on retail packs
Net weight declaration in metric units
Vegetarian mark and nutrition panel where required
Tea Board registration references on trade documentation and tags
trustea and other programme marks where the packer participates
Batch, lot and best-before marking fields left clear for the packer to overprint

Languages typically required

English with Bengali and Hindi is the common domestic combination. Export retail packs add the language of the destination market.

Multi-language versions are set from the text you supply, proofed separately, and packed and marked by version so the packing line cannot mix them.

Seasonal ordering patterns

First flush and second flush cycles drive sample tag volumes from spring onward
Auction calendars create short-notice lot tag runs
Festive gift-pack cartons are ordered ahead of the autumn season

Stock notes

Sample tags are commonly printed two-colour or four-colour on 250 to 300 GSM board at 55 x 65 mm, punched for string.

Tea & Agro — working specification
Common items	Tea sample tags with ruled fields for lot number, grade, number of bags, total weight and date of packing; Packet labels and laminated wrappers for retail tea packs; Cartons and inner cartons for packet and bag ranges
Typical stock	Sample tags are commonly printed two-colour or four-colour on 250 to 300 GSM board at 55 x 65 mm, punched for string.
Printing	Offset CMYK plus spot colours; silkscreen for opaque and metallic
Finishing	Lamination, die-cutting, punching, eyeletting, folding, binding
Languages	English with Bengali and Hindi is the common domestic combination.
Minimum order quantity	To be confirmed
Typical turnaround	To be confirmed
Artwork accepted	PDF, AI, EPS, CDR, JPG, PNG

Product combinations

Printed items produced for Tea & Agro

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