Knowledge Base
Enrich your knowledge about packaging
Quickly find the answer you are looking for to questions about sustainability, finishing options, printing techniques, terms, materials, and much more. Are you missing something? Let us know! The world of packaging continues to develop and so does our knowledge base. So take a regular look at this page and stay informed!
Glossary
Click on a term for more information
General
OTR values are used to compare the relative oxygen barrier capabilities of packaging films.
Equipment
Protect your products well by completely sealing the pouch with a heat sealer. Still easy to open with a tear notch or scissors.
Instead of heat, the impulse sealer gives an electric shock, which melts the material together. The impulse sealer is suitable for sealing 3-layer materials, depending on the thickness of the material and the number of seals per day (due to the wear susceptibility of the seal wires). The more force required, the faster the seal wires will break.
Strips for closing bags and pouches (flexible and with or without glue).
Sustainability
Bio-based materials refer to products that mainly consist of a substance (or substances) derived from living matter (biomass), such as paper, wood and leather. We have 100% kraft paper and PLA as biobased material in many combinations. Partially or 100% compostable (biobased).
The WICOVALVE® W606E was specially developed for the coffee industry and can be composted according to the industrial standard EN13432 in combination with biodegradable laminates. The extensive range of valves has now been ideally complemented with the bio-compostable W606E. This is based on the very popular W606 coffee valve and is designed for heat sealing. In combination with bio-compostable laminate materials, the coffee roaster can now offer a packaging system that is fully biodegradable and optimally protects whole bean coffee against aroma loss.
Industrial composting conditions require an elevated temperature (55-60°C) combined with a high relative humidity and the presence of oxygen, and they are in fact the most optimal compared to other everyday conditions for biodegradation: in soil, surface water and seawater. Complying with EN 13432 is considered a good benchmark for industrial compostability of packaging materials.
Home composting creates conditions with much lower and less stable temperatures than industrial composting. There is no CEN standard for plastics suitable for home composting, but various countries have developed and applied national standards for testing and certifying home compostable materials.
Finishing options
Instead of straight corners, we can also cut the corners round. This prevents cutting and provides a better presentation!
The anti-wobble bottom ensures that the stand-up pouch remains very stable and does not wobble. Specially designed by PouchDirect!
It is possible to provide pouches with a handle. For example, to easily carry pouches with heavy products.
It is possible to provide the pouches with a hang hole / euro-lock, so that the pouches can be easily hung in a presentation rack.
If your product exceeds a certain weight, you can consider using stand-up pouches with a K-seal bottom. In this style, the seals on both sides come up at an angle of 30 degrees. This relieves the seals on both sides of the packaging and provides extra volume.
With laser scoring, packages can be opened effortlessly, which results in higher consumer satisfaction and thus makes brands perform better than competitors with inferior packaging. In consumer tests, packaging with laser scores consistently have consumer preference because they are so easy to open. Note, it does have an influence on the barrier properties of the material.
The CO2 released by freshly roasted coffee beans must be able to escape from the packaging to let oxygen (O2) in. This function is performed by the one-way WICOVALVE®.
The translucency of a printed sheet. The more opacity or the thicker the paper, the less translucent it is. The thicker/heavier the paper, the higher the costs.
In this style, the edge of the gusset is sealed to the sides of the support walls, giving the packaging extra firmness and support it needs to stay upright. Stand-up pouches with a round bottom are the most widely used in the industry and are ideal for products weighing less than one pound.
A tear notch makes packaging produced on vertical form-fill-seal machines easier to open. Because of this small notch in the end seal, the consumer can easily tear the foil to open the product. The notch is made by a hard metal notch die applied in the seal jaw of the jaw.
Varnish used to accentuate a specific part of the printed sheet.
A positive photographic slide on film that allows light to pass through.
It is possible to have a transparent or milky transparent window on the front or back of your pouch.
Printing techniques
Prints that extend to the edge of the sheet after cutting. The bleed is the work printed over the crop line and cut off during cutting. This extra margin ensures that no unprinted edges remain after cutting.
In rotogravure printing, the image is engraved on a copper cylinder.
Colors used in the 4-color printing process - Cyan (c - blue), Magenta (m - red), Yellow (y) and Key (black) (k).
The template ensures the correct layout of the stand-up pouch. It is a diagram or technical drawing showing all cut lines, features and folds to the correct size in flattened shape. Available in .ai format or as pdf.
Rotogravure printing, also known as gravure printing, is a high-quality printing method with a long print run and high speed. Just like pad printing, rotogravure printing is a form of intaglio printing that produces fine, detailed images. The work is good for both Pantone colors and CMYK printing, with each color applied by its own cylinder and drying steps in between.
Digital printing takes a different approach and composes the printable images from a complex set of numbers and formulas. These images are captured based on pixels, and the digitized image is used to control ink, toner and exposure deposition, so that the image you want to print is reproduced.
In flexographic printing (abbreviated flexo), the plate cylinder is covered with a cliché. This is the image carrier and contains all text or images that will ultimately be printed on the substrate. The cliché contains raised printing areas that print the ink onto the substrate. All raised surfaces on a cliché form the image of the edition.
A coated Pantone color is printed on all coated materials. The color shows the color result on a coated surface.
A hot stamp is a high-pressure printing method in which a metallic foil is printed on a surface by means of heat. The metallic foil gives an exclusive appearance to the printing and packaging.
Water-based ink is ink made with water instead of plastic or PVC. Water-based ink can be split into two main ingredients, water and pigment.
Laminating is the technique/process of manufacturing a material in multiple layers, so that the composite material acquires improved strength, stability, sound insulation, appearance or other properties through the use of the different materials, such as plastic.
The standard atmospheric pressure is 1 Bar / 1000 millibar. Our standard PE bags are resistant to an overpressure of maximum 0.5 Bar / 500 millibar, the bags are leak-free. Nylon (PA) material is resistant to an overpressure of maximum 0.8 Bar / 800 millibar.
In printing, "margin" usually refers to page boundaries.
In this technique, the ink is printed on the inner layer of the substrate and it does not come into direct contact with human skin, weather conditions and other substrates because the ink is in most cases sandwiched between two substrates by means of lamination.
An uncoated Pantone color is printed on all coated materials. The color shows the color result on a coated surface.
The definition of printing surface is - a prepared surface (such as a set letter, an electrotype, a lithographic stone, an offset or gravure plate) on which is printed.
A font layout that uses fillable geometric contours of letters and symbols, allowing fonts to be scaled up or down while still maintaining their intended shape. Also known as: vector font.
The overlap occurs when a text box is not wide enough for the text it contains, causing the text to automatically move below the first word. The second word is invisible on the electronic copy, but is visible when the word is printed. To remedy this, you can expand the text box by dragging the handles on the box.
Pantone colors are color codes that stand for a specific shade. The formula developed by Pantone is a spot color. This means that the color is created from a palette of 18 basic colors.
We supply an electronic proof of your design, also known as a die line. This lists all dimensions, gussets, zippers, tear notches, Euro-hole slots, seal thickness and all other features you have requested. This proof also shows the separation of colors needed and for which a separate cylinder must be produced. This document must be signed off by the customer prior to artwork printing.
A pixel is a single-color dot on the computer screen or in a digital image. Many pixels together form an image. Everything you see on the screen consists of pixels. If you buy a screen with a pixel density that is too low, the image quality can be poor.
Another name for CMYK, the 4-color process we use. Cyan (blue), magenta (process red), yellow (process yellow), black (process black).
The quality of the digital image measured by pixels per inch or dots per inch (the same). The fewer dots per inch, the lower the quality. We need at least 300 dots/pixels per inch if the image is approximately the finished size.
RGB is an additive, light-based color used for computer monitors and includes red, green, and blue. It is additive because direct light is used to display color.
We cannot print full bleed images on one side of the bag. Suppose we start cutting and there is a small deviation of 2 millimeters when cutting. Without a cutting margin, you would see the colored edge on the other side of the print. This kind of cosmetic flaws can be prevented during cutting thanks to the extra 2 millimeter margin.
Stand-up pouches have three fundamental dimensions. Width (W), height (H) and bottom gusset (BG). It is written out as W" x H" x BG". Width: measured from the left outer edge to the right outer edge of the bag. Height: measured from the bottom outer edge to the top of the pouch.
A spot color is an 'extra' or 'special' color used alongside the CMYK four-color process. The extra ink is added on a separate roller on the printing press to more accurately print certain colors that are difficult to reproduce with CMYK inks. There are a number of companies that produce and specify spot colors, the most common being the Pantone Color Matching System (PMS).
UV coating is a tough transparent layer applied over printing. Spot UV refers to the application of this UV coating to a specific area (or areas) of a print rather than coating the entire surface. Spot UV is a creative way to add depth and contrast through different levels of gloss and texture.
A clear liquid applied to printed surfaces for appearance and for protection.
Screen printing is transferring a stenciled design onto a flat surface using a mesh screen, ink, and a squeegee. Fabric and paper are the most common screen printing surfaces, but with specialized inks it's also possible to print on wood, metal, plastic, and even glass. The basic method involves creating a stencil on a fine mesh and then pushing ink (or paint, in the case of artwork and posters) through it to create an imprint of your design on the surface beneath.