Restructuring in China Packaging Industry: Green Packaging Develops as a Growing Trend

Recently, “Quality Month” campaigns have been carried out in some provinces in China. Local quality supervision departments have conducted spot checks on retail packaging for food, beverages, alcohol, tea, cigarettes,medicines, health products, cosmetics and other commodities that are selling well. According to industry insiders, with the increasing environmental awareness, green packaging has become a trend. The market for pollutional materials keep shrinking, while packaging and printing companies accelerated their transformation, making product packaging gradually move toward green & environment friendly.

Since the introduction of new “Packaging Regulations” in China, the packaging industry has undergone continuous deep restructuring. Some data show that about 55% of packaging related companies realize that a positive environmental image is very important for their future development; 70% of companies believe that consumer demand, value and recyclable signs on the packaging are important in their marketing activities. Compared with developed countries, China's current color gift box packaging market is far from maturing. While there’s no specific definition for cardboard gift box packaging yet, companies have no accurate understanding of the scope of color it.

A company executive said, the essence of their newly introduced printing platform is to, help accurately understand the scope of cardboardgift box packaging segment the packaging markets, grow a strong brand. While at the same time, the environmental protection measures will be put into practice, using high-quality green materials and advanced pollution-free printing technology.

According to industry insiders, cardboard gift boxpackaging, as an environmentally friendly, cost-effective and mature packaging form, has an infinite development prospect. And with the rapid consumption growth boosted by China’s sustained economic growth, environment-friendly packaging will have a bright future.

What is green packaging?

Green Packaging means pollution-free or Environmental Friendly Packaging, which refers to packaging that is harmless to the ecological environment and human health, can be reused and regenerated, and is in line with sustainable development. This concept contains two implications: one is to protect the environment, and the other to conserve resources.

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Innove is a leading custom cardboard gift boxes supplier from China, offering various fancy setup gift box packaging products and custom box designs service. The product lines include personalized odd shaped boxes, round boxes, square boxes, rectangular boxes, telescoping boxes, shoulder boxes, cardboard drawer boxes, collapsible gift boxes, explosion gift boxes, cardboard window boxes, nesting gift boxes sets, etc.

How to Design Gift Packaging that Appeals to Consumers

Generally, custom designs of gift packaging has direct impact on the sales of the contained products. For packaging like Mid-Autumn moon cake boxes, tea gift packaging boxes, cosmetic boxes, etc., consumers' first impressions would often determine their buying decision. So how can we design an attractive and selling gift box packaging? Listed below are some takeaways for good custom gift boxes designs:

1. Color: Color has a great impact on people's emotions. Therefore, we believe that the color of the wrapping paper can be distinguished by age and gender of target market segmentation: men should be mainly in cool colors, women can go bright colors or simple but elegant color, children should choose bright & colorful colors, and lovely patterns with corrugated cardboard.

2. Theme: This is the basis for determining gift box packaging. Gifts are available in a variety of themes. For example, love gift packaging can take heart shape or rose pattern,  decorated with Cupid's arrow, showing a deep affection. The family gifts can be decorated with warm colors to highlight the intimacy of simplicity and tranquility.

3. Artistic: Each carefully processed & packaged goods can reflect a certain artistic.  The role of small embellishments like decorative strips and ornament flowers, etc. should be paid attention to. They may increase the artistic effect to the finishing touch of gift packaging.

4. Eco-friendly. The public, especially sophisticated consumers worldwide are increasingly concerned about the environment we’re living in. This social conscience is worth promoting and can also be applied to the packaging to appeal the consumers.

Design & Printing on Corrugated Paper Gift Boxes

1. Strength: The flute design is the primary content of the strength. The corrugated cardboard includes single-flute and multiple-flute layers. And for each flute layer, there are 3 varying profiles to be chosen from: flute A, B & C. Multiple-flute boxes usually come in mixing flute profiles. Designers must choose the right flute type and profiles according to the pre-design knowledge.

2. Material selection: the choice of cardboard material is an important part of the strength design, it not only affects the printing effect, but also has a bearing on the physical properties of the finished corrugated boxes. For example, there is a close relationship between the water content of the paper and the strength of the carton. While choosing paper to use, different weather conditions must be considered. And paperboard produced must also meet the requirements in terms of physical properties such as breakage resistance, side pressure and adhesion.

An important reason for the popularity of cardboard packaging is their environmental benefits. Thus the use of consumables like ink, additives, polishes, and the recycling properties of paperboard itself must be in compliance with environmental requirements. And when used for packaging food, medicine or children's toys, the cardboard boxes must also meet the requirements of hygiene, health and safety. Of course, in case of export, it is necessary to consider the relevant laws and regulations of the destination country.

3. Size: In designing the box size, in addition to the reasonable length, width and height ratio according to the contents, designers should also consider the right container types to make full use of packaging space.

4. Printing process problems: designers need to pay attention to the difference between various printing processes. The printing methods commonly used in corrugated boxes in China mainly include offset printing, silkscreen printing, flexo printing, and gravure printing etc. Changes in printing methods directly affect other processes, and even result in change of print materials. For example, it’s difficult to use  water-based ink flexographic printing over coated  paper. When using the popular flexo printing process, it is necessary to pay attention to the layout.

With flexo printing, thin lines, small texts, and patterns with dots should not be arranged on a layout with a large-area flush color background. Because the full-page flush color background printing requires a larger printing pressure, it is easy to make small text and pattern deformation, causes printing problems like blurring, broken lines, missing font strokes, and dot loss, etc.  and will result in premature wearing or damage of the printing plate. If they had to be in the same page, then the exposure time should be extended to improve the hardness and printing durability of the plate at the fine image.

In order to overcome the unevenness and roughness of the cardboard surface, the printing plate is required to be wear-resistant, strong in impact resistance, moderate in hardness, good in resilience after being pressed, uniform in ink and thickness. Based on the pattern, the size of the text, lines and the material of the corrugated board, change the layout, hardness and making methods of the flexo plates accordingly. When the corrugated board is of poor quality or with full page background printing, thicker and softer flexo plate should be used. When the corrugated board has good quality or printing fine patterns and small characters, choose harder and thinner or resin flexo plates.

If the printing surface of the corrugated board is uneven, rough, warping and with other problems, it may cause filling in(糊版), crush, wearing or damage to the flexographic resin plate. Therefore, the quality of the base paper should be strictly controlled in the printing process of cardboard gift boxes.

Custom Designs of Cardboard Gift Box Packaging

Modeling and structural design are an important part of commodity packaging. Packaging designers must ensure that the box structure has sufficient strength, hardness and resistance to environments. There are two things to be addressed: firstly, the primary function is to protect the products, and secondly, it should meet the important characteristics of modern packaging, such as transportation and processing etc.

Qualified cardboard gift boxes start with the right structural design. Designers must not only truly understand the customer's intentions, but also be familiar with the subsequent processing techniques. Only in this way can the customer's intention be converted into a qualified packaging, and the subsequent processing of the product can be smoothly carried out. Before the design begins, the designer should understand the nature, shape, size and weight of the contents; the arrangement of the contents, the transportation method, the stacking method; the storage environment, the transportation route and time, and the box type and materials.

Once the needed information as mentioned above has been determined, it is also important to know whether the desired box is transport-oriented or sales-oriented. Sales-oriented paper gift boxes fall into the category of commercial packaging, and focus on the appearance of the boxes, and printing needs to be considered. Transportation-oriented boxes are industrial packaging. It is necessary to consider the requirements of compression and shock resistance. Thus, designers must determine the position of the opening and die cutting without affecting the strength. In case of reusability, they also need to consider the efficiency of packing and operation.

Five major technologies worthy of attention in the field of paper packaging's printing

Below listed are the five major technologies worthy of attention in the field of paper packaging's printing:
1. Offset printing online hot stamping technology
Traditional hot stamping requires a special metal hot stamping plate. The hot stamping material is transferred to the surface of the printing material by heating and pressing, and the speed is relatively slow to feed the paper, which is difficult to be hot stamped with the offset printing. Offset online hot stamping technology is to paste the image to be stamped onto the surface of the substrate through the adhesive under normal temperature conditions. The realization method is to directly use two units of the original offset printing machine, a set of printing glue layer and a set of transfer metal hot stamping foil.

Advantages: hot stamping speed, high efficiency; one-time paper-printing and metal foil transfer digital printing, high registration accuracy; the resolution of cold-hot plate can reach the resolution of offset printing plate, hot stamping can be printed At normal temperature, it can be stamped on the surface of temperature-sensitive materials without heating; saving energy.

2. Web hot stamping technology
The web bronzing machine has taken the lead in mature application in China's cigarette package market, and will achieve greater development as the market demand for high-efficiency, high-quality hot stamping jobs increases. At present, the more mature enterprises are: Changde Jinpeng Printing Co., Ltd., Yunnan Qiaotong Packaging and Printing Co., Ltd., Yunnan Yuxi Printing Co., Ltd., Chongqing Hongsheng Printing Co., Ltd., Yunnan Jiujiu Printing Co., Ltd. and Dongguan Zhiyuan Color Printing Co., Ltd. Company, etc. Enterprises that often encounter large batches, high bronzing process requirements, and short customer delivery schedules can focus on web bronzing technology.

3. Fixed length stretching composite printing to avoid laser seam seam technology
Laser holographic laser transfer paper is a new type of packaging material that is widely used in the packaging and printing industry at home and abroad. However, a major problem is that it is easy to produce laser-type seam RIP when printing on a rotary gravure printing machine, which causes great waste. At present, there are mainly two fixed-length stretch composite printing avoidance laser seam sewing technology solutions.

Packaging and printing companies can make reasonable choices based on their own funds and actual production. If the company has a rotary gravure printing equipment, it can use the off-line solution to suppress the irregularities, and purchase the laser aluminized transfer paper that can avoid the seams from the composite paper manufacturer, and only need to modify the paper feeding mechanism of the original rotary printing equipment. Yes, the investment risk and technical risk of the company are small.

4. Laser pattern imprint transfer technology
The laser pattern imprinting transfer technology is a high-tech that integrates decoration, anti-counterfeiting and environmental protection. Its outstanding advantages are: it meets environmental protection requirements, and the anti-counterfeiting effect is good, and the production cost is reduced.

5. Combined printing technology
In a sense, a combination printing press is no longer simply a printing device, but a streamlined production line that integrates multiple printing and finishing processes.

Combination printing is a combination of various printing process technologies, that is, integrating multiple printing methods (such as flexo, offset, gravure, screen printing, or even digital printing) and post-press processing on the same production line ( Such as light, film, die-cutting, indentation, hot stamping, embossing, etc., combine the advantages of various printing and post-press processing methods, and complement each other to obtain the best printing effect.