Silkscreen Printing for Tea & Agro

What the buyer is actually specifying

Because photography, design and artwork, colour scanning, offset printing, lamination and silkscreen printing are all carried out in-house, a change to the silkscreen printing specification does not have to be negotiated across three suppliers. One purchase order covers the finished item, delivered ready for the tea and agro packing line.

In tea and agro, silkscreen printing is used for work of this kind:

• Opaque white base printed under colour on clear polyester labels
• Metallic gold and silver panels on hang tags and cartons
• Fluorescent high-visibility panels on safety and PPE printed matter
• Scratch-resistant marking on plastic components and rigid sheets

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:

• 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

Specification we start from

Size and format range: From small labels to large-format sheets. Sheet size range confirmed against the specific screen bed at quotation. 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 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.

• Screen preparation, mesh selection and stencil exposure in-house
• One colour per pass, with drying between passes
• Ink adhesion tested on the actual substrate before the production run

Materials that hold up in this application

• Art and duplex board of all weights
• Polyester, polypropylene, PVC and clear films
• Laminated and varnished surfaces where ink adhesion must be tested first
• Rigid sheets and formed plastic parts

Lamination, die-cutting and screen work are in-house, so a specification that combines an offset base with a silkscreen opaque or metallic pass can be run without moving the job to another plant.

• Overprint varnish and UV curing
• Combination work: offset base with silkscreen highlight on the same sheet
• Die-cutting and creasing after printing

Labelling obligations

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 tea and agro, the content that commonly appears on this item includes:

• 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

Languages

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

Ordering pattern

• 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

Artwork notes

• 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.