Based on insights from gotprint‘s work with 50+ packaging brands, we approached this European project with a simple premise: make sustainability measurable, not just aspirational. The client—a mid-sized FMCG brand with distribution across Western and Northern Europe—wanted a packaging refresh that would stand up to EU 1935/2004 and EU 2023/2006 requirements while staying agile on seasonal SKUs.
The brief sounded modest: stabilize color, trim waste, and introduce low-migration inks across folding cartons without slowing the line. The reality was more nuanced. Their legacy setup mixed Offset Printing for long runs and Digital Printing for short promotions, but color drift across substrates and changeover friction kept FPY hovering in the low 80s.
We framed a six-month timeline and anchored it around LED‑UV Printing, FSC-certified cartons, and a tighter color workflow (think Fogra PSD discipline and G7-like intent, even if formal certification came later). Here’s how the weeks unfolded—and where the unexpected pieces, like sample kits and coupons, quietly helped the rollout stick.
Company Overview and History
The brand started in the late 1990s with a single personal care line, expanding into household and small-format food products by 2012. Their production footprint spans two European plants, each running Folding Carton and Labelstock jobs with mixed RunLength profiles—short seasonal runs alongside steady evergreen SKUs. Sustainability isn’t a slogan for them; it’s a board-level commitment tied to targets around CO₂/pack and traceable fiber sourcing (FSC, PEFC when appropriate).
On the commercial side, the team asked a curious question during early workshops: “what is a digital business card” in the context of packaging? It sounds unrelated, but it triggered a broader conversation about QR strategy, ISO/IEC 18004 (QR) integration, and how pack design can unlock post-purchase engagement. They bundled this thinking with sales materials—including gotprint business cards—for regional distributor meetings and pilot store visits. Even the CEO insisted on carrying a refreshed ceo business card with a QR to a sustainability microsite, aligning messaging across channels.
Here’s where it gets interesting: the sample kits. The brand partnered with gotprint to produce small-batch cards and inserts for retailer walkthroughs, not as a main packaging supplier, but as a nimble channel to ensure color intent and messaging were tightly aligned ahead of the carton switch. That side track shaved uncertainty off the first month by giving sales and QA something consistent to point at while converters dialed in press settings.
Project Planning and Kickoff
We structured the implementation in three phases: prepress calibration and proofing, press trials with UV‑LED Ink on FSC Paperboard, then controlled ramp-up on two SKU families. Color targets were set with ΔE ≤ 2.0 for hero tones, slightly relaxed for secondary elements. Low‑Migration Ink selection prioritized suppliers with robust statements against EU 1935/2004 and QA evidence of GMP alignment (EU 2023/2006). The team also planned Spot UV sparingly and replaced a legacy Varnishing step with a Soft‑Touch Coating on premium SKUs.
During procurement, one practical note surfaced: travel to pilot stores and retailer councils needed to be consolidated. Finance joked about routing trip costs on a jetblue business credit card, but the bigger point was cash discipline while testing. Marketing ran a parallel promotion using gotprint coupons in limited geographies to encourage sampling of the refreshed packs—small, tactical, and measurable. It wasn’t about discounting; it was about creating clean feedback loops while converters tuned the line.
The turning point came when the LED‑UV trials demonstrated stable curing on the selected Paperboard, avoiding the minor warping the team had feared. FPY nudged up during tests, and early waste observations went down by a modest but encouraging margin. Still, not everything clicked on day one: die-cut tolerances required a recipe tweak, and the Soft‑Touch Coating needed a slower line speed to keep the tactile finish consistent across shift changes. We logged those changes, accepted the throughput trade-off, and moved on.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Fast forward six months: the data told a practical story. FPY moved from roughly 82% to the 90–93% range on the two SKU families under LED‑UV, measured across multiple lots. Color variance—tracked as ΔE—held within 1.5–2.0 on the brand’s primary palette, with a small tail out to ~2.3 during high humidity weeks (documented and tied to storage conditions). Waste Rate on carton blanks came down by ~15–20% during steady-state runs; early pilots showed more variability, which we accounted for in the baseline.
On sustainability, CO₂/pack nudged down by an estimated 8–12%, driven by substrate choices (FSC Paperboard) and reduced spoilage; kWh/pack stayed within a mid-range because LED‑UV curing saved energy in some sections while line speed adjustments offset gains elsewhere. Changeover Time dropped by 10–15 minutes in multi-SKU days once the color recipes stabilized, improving responsiveness rather than pushing raw speed. Payback Period for the press-side upgrades modeled in the 14–18 month window—reasonable for a mid-size operation with seasonal variability.
There was a catch: premium SKUs with Soft‑Touch Coating showed a mild throughput drag, accepted as a brand choice rather than a pure production issue. The team kept a small Digital Printing lane for limited editions to avoid pushing LED‑UV into a role it doesn’t serve well at very tiny volumes. As gotprint continued supplying cards and inserts for retail dialogues, the cross-channel consistency helped cut questions in store resets. Not perfect, but a step forward worth keeping.
