Tag: coating

3 Types of Soft-Touch Coatings to Make Your Packaging Fly off the Store Shelf

An elegant matte appearance with a rich, suede-like feel, soft-touch coatings have become popular with print and packaging designers over the last decade. Soft touch coatings allow luxury and beauty brands to emphasize their high-end status while making the unboxing experience a pleasurable—and even memorable—tactile event. Coatings also help protect packaging against damage in high-traffic retail environments.

Even more importantly, soft touch coatings increase sales. In fact, one study shows that consumers are willing to pay 5% more for a product in a soft-feeling package! 

But to complicate things, there are numerous ways to achieve this effect, each of which has its own benefits.

Below is a summary of the most common ways to apply a soft touch coating so when you’re ready, you can request from your printer the method that best meets your needs.

How Soft Touch is Applied to Packaging

1. Lamination

The most durable way to achieve a soft touch feel is to laminate bi-oriented polypropylene film (BoPP) during the finishing process. Since soft-touch laminates provide a moisture barrier, they tend to make printing appear more muted. Soft touch laminates tend to also be the most expensive option and the plasticized film makes the packaging difficult to recycle. But lamination provides excellent scuff resistance, will prevent corners from curling over time, and will add thickness to the packaging’s structure, thereby making it ideal for e-commerce packaging.

2. Coatings

Due to the cost savings, many designers prefer applying soft touch coatings. Since it does not require an extra press pass, it’s a less expensive process than lamination. And if the coating is aqueous (water-based), this process will not affect the recyclability of the underlying substrate. It will also not mute the printed inks as much as a laminate. Coatings are usually used on paper-based packaging.

3. Cast-and-Cure

The most cost-effective option is Cast and Cure™, which can be applied to just about any type of packaging, from flexible pouches to plastics, paperboard, paper, and labels. With Cast and Cure™, a standard UV varnish is applied inline, after which a special film is “cast” or overlaid onto the varnish, transferring the soft-touch pattern. The varnish is then cured and the film rolled back onto a new core, to be used again. This can be further combined with other types of varnishes to enhance the soft-touch feel.

The cast and cure process has myriad benefits. Since the coefficient of friction (CoF) of standard UV varnish is typically better than aqueous coatings, a cast and cure soft touch coating will make your package more scuff resistant than a standard aqueous offering. Moreover, Cast and Cure™ requires no extra press wash-up, so production time is less. Even more importantly, since the film can be reused numerous times, it is one of the most cost-effective and eco-friendly processes on the market.

Finally, since UV varnishes are recyclable, cast and cure coatings won’t affect the recyclability of your packaging.

This label was printed on PS label stock on a single-color press in three passes: 100%K spot, a holographic cast-and-cure spot coating to the swoosh and text, and a soft touch INX coating along with Breit Tech’s LS-10 matte film. 

Getting Started

When you’re ready to apply a soft touch coating to your next design project, first identify the challenges you’re trying to overcome. If recyclability and cost savings is a priority, then you’ll want to use Cast and Cure™. If it’s more important that your packaging remain scuff free on-shelf or during shipping, then a more expensive soft-touch laminate may be your best option.

In either case, you’ll never go wrong by applying a velvet-like coating to a label, printed piece, or package. Not only will your customers find it almost impossible to put down, but it will increase the lifespan of the piece AND improve sales.

Metallic and Special Effects Labels Help Brands Stand Out

Excerpted from Label and Narrow Web magazine, March 2022


Cast-and-cure holography applied to a basic spray bottle label elevates the design and adds eye-catching elements.

With SKU proliferation and an explosion of new brands now reaching the marketplace, metallic and special effects lead the way in the high stakes game of standing out on the store shelf.

According to Tim Cain, President of Breit Technologies, before using any type of specialty effects, brand owners and designers should ask themselves which effect will most likely attract their target market, what enhancements are being used by competitors, and if the enhancement will engage their target audience or just confuse them.

Of course, utilizing illuminating graphics does not mean sacrificing recyclability.

“Since casting film can be reused up to a dozen times (and sometimes even more), there’s a significant cost savings in terms of the amount of film needed for any given job. Less film means less money spent on shipping fees and warehousing,” explains Cain.

“Moreover, the cast-and-cure process does not use any adhesives or metals, so it won’t affect the recyclability of the label,” says Cain. “That’s great news for brand owners following a corporate sustainability strategy.”

 

How to Begin

When brand owners approach Breit with a project, the company first asks them to describe what they are hoping to achieve. If their needs can be met with one of their many stock patterns, then Breit will supply them with proofs that showcase a few different patterns so they can visualize how the pattern will appear on the printed label.

If instead they’re looking for a unique holographic design or wish to embed an invisible security feature into a hologram to protect the product against counterfeiting, “we’ll work with them to develop the custom design,” says Cain. Once the design is approved, Breit provides a sample mockup that shows how the label will appear once printed.

When first working with Cast and Cure™, making sure that the presses can run the film is also important, so Breit provides customers with sample film rolls so label printers can test it on their presses before starting the job.

 

No Wrong Way to Use Holography

Of course, designing for holography can be tricky. Holographic metallized PET (H-MPET) requires designing multiple opaque ink layers to mask those areas of the printed piece where the holography should not bleed through. Since Cast and Cure™ is applied as a clear varnish, the designer needs to only create a spot varnish layer.

“Although bold, solid color backgrounds showcase cast-and-cure holographic effects the best, it can also be used to create the illusion of movement over photographs and busy backgrounds,” says Cain. “Ultimately, however, there is no wrong way to use cast-and-cure holography or textured effects.”

 

Product Selection

As well as offering more than 30 stock holographic patterns, including matte, high gloss, leather, and linen textures, Breit offers a wide range of cast-and-cure equipment. Breit can also create custom holograms or can modify an existing pattern to meet a customer’s needs.

Breit is also collaborating with another company to develop Cast and Cure™ for monochrome inkjet printers. According to Cain, this will allow for a variable varnish application so unique security features, names, etc. can be applied to individual printed pieces.

Whatever type of special effects a brand owner or designer chooses to apply, rest assured that specialty coating suppliers such as Breit Technologies will be there to provide the resources needed to better convey brand messaging and help increase in-store sales.

To read the unedited LNW article, click here.