We are Beverage Can Label Experts!
Beverage Can Label Experts
Because of the great brewery customers that have trusted us all these years, we have become beverage can label experts. Putting labels on cold, wet cans moving at high speed is not easy. Excellent machine operators need to keep the speed, tension, and label pressure at optimal levels. Still, without premium labels from bevergage can label experts, you don’t have a chance.
Tons of New Sizes!
Today we print for many, many different can sizes. 16oz and 12oz are definitely most popular, but the 19.2oz can is coming on strong. A few of our brewery clients are going exclusively to the 4-pack of 16oz cans for all their packaged beer in 2021. No bottles and no other formats. Whatever you need, we can help. We add new sizes to our library every week.
Gateway Brewing is a wonderful community brewery. They had good success during COVID-19 by offering home delivery of their 16oz cans. We love working with smart, creative businesses that adapt and stay relevant in tough times. Check them out at gatewaybrewingpdx.com
Cider in Cans, Too!
Most of our beverage can labels are for beer – maybe that is changing. More and more we are seeing cider, mead, and CBD infused seltzers packaged in cans. This diversity makes it even more interesting for us. And the material choices are endless – clear, white, metallic – we lots of options to make your design pop off the shelf. And, with our very dense white ink, we can provide some amazing effects on clear and metallic substrates – ask us about them when you call with your next project.
Protection Matters!
The label hasn’t done its job until it gets into the consumer’s shopping cart and then into their cooler while still representing your brand image. This requires lamination. A laminate (lamination) is a thin layer of poly that is fused over the ink to protect from scuffing. Most bottles have a ridge or bumper designed into the profile so you never have the label rubbing against the adjacent label – this protection isn’t provided to cans. Cans are just a perfect cylinder with constant rubbing and scuffing. Without lamination, your labels will look horrible in the grocery cooler.
Work with Experts!
Thankfully for you, we have made all the mistakes and learned all the lessons. We work with all the leading mobile canners and we know how to get can labels done on time and budget. We are beverage can label experts! Call us today – we look forward to helping you.
has always been – you heat a magnesium, copper, or brass plate up to 220 degrees and smash the foil onto the label with tremendous force. The process is the same, but this press is much more precise. These are the key features explained in the video:
Because this is a bit of a crude printing technology, the design must be appropriate. Fade screens, photos, and extreme detail is not possible with hot stamp foil printing. The printing plate seen in this image is etched or engraved (depending on the metal) and the fine details are not possible. Besides the plate detail, the physical process of smashing foil into paper is not as elegant as our other printing press options. Typically bold logos, sans serif type, and borders are good candidates for hot stamp foil printing. If you have a design in mind, please send it to us for review. We can make suggestions to help maximize the impact of your foil elements without wasting money on areas that won’t print well. Fine lines – especially parallel lines together – can be very difficult. The result can be a crude, blocky appearance that defeats the effect you are trying to create. Send us your file for review – we can help get the foil in the right places for maximum impact.
just feels different than most labels – you know you are drinking something special. In this case, the front label on the bottle is a deeply embossed placard that complements this label very well. Together, they make a premium package for your product.
Some customers are fascinated with the technology behind their labels, and some really just want the results. If you like knowing how we get your labels to pop off the shelf, this is the paragraph for you. One of the key components of high quality label printing is the delivery of ink and coating to the label stock. The ink (or in this case, coating) is dispensed by a very expensive, finely engraved roller with microscopic ‘cups’ that carry and release coating onto the printing plate. These rollers have various line screens – numbers of cavities per linear inch. As the number of cells is increased, the volume of ink dispensed is reduced. In this case, we used a very coarse, high volume roller to deliver a very thick coating of varnish to the label surface. The textured label varnish is also enhanced with a fine grain additive – almost like putting sand into the label coating. Together with the proper volume, pressure, and press speed, this label ends up with a very distinctive tactile feel.
A ‘Choke’ is a contraction or reduction of size of an element. In this example, a full color image is surrounded by a black border. They are designed to fit adjacent to each other with no overlap. However, on a press, holding that perfect alignment isn’t possible, which can result in a white line between the elements, like this (the ‘before’ image). In order to fix this, we ‘choked’ the outside black border into the color image in the center. This addition of a very, very small stroke around the border ensures that even with a bit of movement, there is never a white line showing. We can spot this problem in the graphics phase when plates are being made to avoid a white line like this. We know trapping.
for cost and simplicity, we chose to choke the outside border into the image. The other very common use of a ‘spread’ is to compensate for the expansion of ink as it is transferred from the printing plate to the label stock. Without the sread, small reverse type like this would fill in. Again, this image on the right is a ‘before’ picture of what would happen without proper trapping. By opening up those white letters, we compensate for the natural filling in. Trapping is critical to getting you high quality labels, and we know trapping!