Label & Litho

Last month in the blog we talked about the benefit of digital label printing. It’s important to remember that Label & Litho offer both digital and conventional printing solutions for clients. This is because there is no one perfect option. The method we use for best results and value all depends on the job – we’ll consider run size, colour, style, label type and more.

Why use conventional label printing?

Conventional (or Flexo) printing is suited for larger runs of labels, due to the high printing speeds.

Our conventional presses can produce quality labels with up to nine colours as well as hot-foiling, cold-foiling, screen-printing, flexo with die-cutting, perforating, printing on the adhesive, laminating and printing on the backing sheet if required.

Each colour required for your label will be set up as a separate plate. The conventional printing press applies one colour at a time to the label stock.

There is more set up required with a conventional press as the colour is refined and the equipment is calibrated properly to get the best results. A by-product of this approach is some wastage. Setting up a great print on a conventional press is a true skill that our staff know inside and out!

If you have a particular colour that must be matched exactly during the print, we may use conventional printing for that extra level of accuracy. Using colour guides like the Pantone matching system (PMS), you can be assured that the colours you want on your label will turn out exactly as you intend. When using digital printing you use the CMYK colour model to match to the PMS spot colours.

Why use digital label printing?

Digital printing offers a lot more ability to change a label design or colour with no added cost. If you only want 100-500 labels to test a product, we’ll use digital printing to keep costs down.

You may have a design that requires special graphics that will be easier to implement via digital printing. The most common case of this is a label design with a large range of colours.

As mentioned in an earlier blog post, digital printing will avoid wastage as there’s little to no testing/calibration of equipment at the beginning. You’ll get labels back faster with digital printing. Being environmentally friendly is very important, so Label & Litho receiving Enviro-mark Gold Certification in 2006 was a big achievement.

For more on the benefits of digital check out our recent blog post.

Contact us with your label printing job

Each label is unique. Talk to us about your product and we’ll advise you how to create the best label possible.