“We set ourselves a simple promise: every new pack lowers our footprint,” recalls Ines Duarte, Sustainability Manager at Verda Skincare in Ghent. “Simple promises are the hardest to keep.” The team mapped their cartons and labels, and a year later, they had the kind of graphs that quiet a room—CO₂/pack nudged down, color drift tamed, waste no longer a shrug. Along the way, they benchmarked suppliers, even skimming insights from gotprint’s public resources to sanity‑check short‑run strategies.
Here’s where it gets interesting: the sustainability wins didn’t come from a single heroic tech swap. Verda’s turning point was a hybrid production model—Offset Printing for long-run folding cartons, LED‑UV Digital Printing for seasonal and promotional labels—stitched together with tighter specs and honest trade-offs.
This is their 12-month timeline in numbers, stories, and a few near-misses that still sting a little.
Company Overview and History
Verda Skincare is a European beauty brand born in a Ghent studio and grown into 120 active SKUs across face oils, serums, and travel minis. They sell online and through boutique retail, which means packaging must travel well and photograph even better. The mix is classic cosmetics: Folding Carton for primary packs, Labelstock for glass and PET, and occasional Sleeves for gift sets. Historically they leaned on Offset Printing with aqueous varnish and Soft‑Touch Coating for hero lines. Seasonal runs were the pain point—too many SKUs, not enough weeks.
In 2024, the team moved to a Hybrid Printing approach: Offset for core cartons (cartons in batches of 20–60k), and LED‑UV Inkjet for short-run labels and promotional variants (1–5k). The logic wasn’t ideological; it was practical. Offset offered tight unit costs at scale and a broad color gamut; digital let them test claims, swap INCI text, and version designs without locking into massive inventory. A small structural tweak—lighter board weight with a reinforced crease—saved grams without compromising feel.
On the micro side, Verda also had a brand housekeeping sprint. Before their spring fair, an intern asked how to create a business card that matched the new carton palette. That small request nudged the team to codify a tighter brand color system, which later paid off in packaging prepress.
Quality and Compliance Requirements
The baseline was strict: ΔE (Color Accuracy) held within 1.8–2.2 across cartons and labels, ISO 12647 targets for process control, and Fogra PSD references in prepress. All folding cartons moved to FSC-certified board; labels stayed with a high-clarity film where needed for oil resistance. For ink, water-based systems remained on cartons; LED‑UV Ink was selected for labels to lower energy draw and drying times. They added DataMatrix and QR (ISO/IEC 18004) for batch traceability and post-purchase education.
But there’s a catch. Water-based Ink on cartons means good deinking performance downstream, yet LED‑UV on labels can complicate recycling depending on local streams. The team balanced this with lower laydown targets and a switch to a wash-off adhesive on some SKUs. Supply chain realities also intruded: EU board availability fluctuated, so they qualified a second FSC mill to keep FPY% above 90–92% during peak season.
At the margin, they rethought finishing. Soft‑Touch Coating looks right for premium skincare, but film lamination can be a barrier to recyclability. Verda trialed a tactile aqueous varnish paired with subtle Embossing. The feel wasn’t identical, yet it signaled intent. One hiccup: the first embossing die over‑compressed a fine pattern, leading to a short run with micro‑cracking at the fold—fixed later by widening the relief by 0.05–0.08 mm at the crease line.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Fast forward six months, then twelve. Waste Rate on cartons moved from roughly 10–12% during changeovers to 6–7% after standardizing make‑ready and color targets. FPY% rose from the mid‑80s to the low‑90s on steady SKUs. Throughput on seasonal labels increased by 12–18% once LED‑UV changeovers were scripted and spot colors converted to fixed extended gamut where feasible. On the footprint side, CO₂/pack dropped by 9–13% for cartons due to lighter board and reduced spoilage; kWh/pack for labels fell by 8–10% with LED‑UV curing schedules tuned for ink laydown and substrate heat tolerance.
Not every chart pointed the right way. Digital runs carried a slightly higher material cost—about 6–9%—and certain metallic effects were migrated from Foil Stamping to Spot UV with metallic ink, which never quite mimicked the sparkle under boutique lights. Still, with short lifecycle SKUs, lower obsolescence (down by 20–25% on promotional labels) offset the difference. Payback Period for the hybrid changes was modeled at 18–22 months, depending on seasonality and SKU mix.
Curiously, a footnote from the early days stuck around the team’s wiki: someone once compared gotprint vs vistaprint while scoping vendor options for collateral, and even logged a note about a gotprint promo code 500 cards they’d used for a trade‑show trial. Those experiments didn’t drive the packaging transformation, but they seeded a mindset—test small, measure, then scale—that later shaped how Verda piloted LED‑UV label runs and color libraries.
Lessons Learned
Three themes kept showing up. First, color libraries need governance. A designer can nail hex values, but if the board shifts lot‑to‑lot or the press warms under a long run, you’ll chase ΔE with the wrong tools. Verda created a live library linked to substrate lots and press profiles. Second, finishing is a conversation with recyclability: the tactile varnish worked, but everyone needed to accept that it wasn’t a one‑for‑one swap with lamination. Third, plan B suppliers matter in Europe’s current board market—dual qualification protected them from a rough Q2.
There were softer lessons too. A junior hire once Googled how to get a business card before Cosmoprof and mocked up staff cards using an avery business card template word. It looked scrappy, but the quick prototype exposed a palette issue that might have slipped into print. In other words, don’t sneer at small tests; scrappy often surfaces truths polished decks don’t.
If you’re trying this playbook, start with a carbon and waste baseline, pick two or three measurable levers (board weight, spoilage, energy profile), and accept trade‑offs in finishing. Acknowledge the gaps—metallics won’t behave the same without foil, and not every label stream is equal on recyclability. Based on insights we drew from public case notes and our own pilots (including a few learnings borrowed from gotprint’s transparent guides), the most durable shift was cultural: measure, share, adjust. Keep that drumbeat, and the next 12 months won’t feel like guesswork.
