A spout pouch is a type of flexible packaging.
The spout pouches are used to package both liquid and solid products.
These pouches are gaining popularity faster since they are economic and environment friendly.
You can customize the spout pouch by printing on it making it more appealing to customers.
Step 1: Know The Spout Pouch Material
The products inside the spout pouch need to be protected hence you should be very keen when selecting the material to use.
The spout pouch has different materials used for the outer, inner, and middle layers.
For the inner layer, you will use low-density polythene materials and cast polypropylene.
This is because this material can endure high heat and are heat sealable.
The above characteristic enables your printed spout pouch to contain and retain heat.
For the middle layer, you use aluminum foil.
This is because they have great clarity and stiffness.
Also, aluminum foil and nylon have a large melting point.
These characteristics make your pouch resistant to moisture and oxygen.
The materials of the outer layer of the pouch are made from oriented polypropylene and polythene terephthalate.
The oriented polypropylene has a great clarity hence increasing the spout pouch barrier characteristics.
Polyethylene terephthalate is strong as well as temperature resistant.
This helps prevent the damage of two content and packaging.
Also, it offers temperature resistance to the printed spout pouch.
Discuss various materials for making spout pouches and explain how they determine the type of printing technique you will use
Printed spout pouch
Step 2: Choose or Design Artwork or Graphics to Print On the Spout Pouch
The choice of artwork of your printed spout pouch will depend on where you will use it and also your budget.
Also, the contents inside your spout pouch will greatly determine your choice of artwork.
You also have to put in mind the target market for your product, this enables you to invest well in designing your printed spout pouch.
And by doing so, you can customize and design your printed spout pouch to meet the customer’s satisfactory requirements.
Also, when designing your printed spout pouch, always ensure you customize it for it to appear unique among the competition.
Always create and design your spout pouches in different shapes, sizes since this makes it easy to grab customers’ attention.
When designing always put in mind that the contents it can take are limited.
Then you put the above into consideration, it enables you to factor in important elements of the pouch-like shape, quality as well as quantity of the printed spout pouch and its contents.
The choice of artwork will depend on the type of printing technique you will be using on the spout pouch.
Spout pouch designs
Step 3: Choose Spout Pouch Printing Technique
There are various techniques you can use to print on your spout pouch.
They include;
Rotogravure Printing Spout Pouches
This technique is simply a long-run, high-quality, and high-speed printing technique.
Just like engraving, the technique produces detailed and fine images on your spout pouches.
The minimum run of this printing technique is ten thousand bags.
This technique will also offer you printing options in nine different colors.
When you use this technique you will produce high-quality and low-priced spout pouches.
Here, the images to be printed, designs, and words are engraved on the surface of a metal plate.
The engraved area is then filled with special ink.
Finally, the plate is rotated on a cylinder which then transfers the image and words to the spout pouch.
Rotogravure printing
Benefits Of Rotogravure Printing Spout Pouch
- It produces high and good-quality images.
- Its running cost is low in high production volumes.
- The printing cylinders last through high-volume runs without degrading the image.
- This method can be used in printing thin films like nylon that come in wide ranges of thickness.
Limitations Of Rotogravure Printing Spout Pouch
- Its startup cost is very high meaning you have to make thousands of copies to make it profitable.
- It has a long lead time for the preparation of cylinder hence specialized techniques are required.
- The rotogravure printing has rasterized texts and lines.
Digital Printing Spout Pouches
You use this printing technique in printing complex texts and images on a medium-quality surface.
Here, an inkjet-based printing technique is used, whereby, branding and graphic elements are applied directly on the spout pouches.
This technique has no minimum run.
The statement above simply means you can print from 200 to 20000 pouches and its dependent pf your specifications.
The Digital printing technique produces expensive spout pouches.
Advantages Of Digital Printing Spout Pouch
Digital printer for spout pouch
The advantages of using digital printing on spout pouch are as follow;
One of the outstanding advantages of this technique is plates are not involved here.
When using this technique, you will get very vibrant colors.
This technique has minimum setup times and this allows you to get the best value for short print runs.
Digital printing technology has the quickest turnaround times.
Since this technique is being embraced, many manufacturing paper companies are creating papers capable of use here.
This gives you multiple choices of what paper you want to use.
The technique can add an inline finish to the workflow.
Limitations Of Digital Printing Spout Pouches
The limitations of digital printing of spout pouches are as follows;
When your print gets longer, the quality of the print on the spout pouch diminishes.
You will not be able to use metallic inks to print on the spout pouch using this technique as the ink will short circuit the press.
This is because the technique only utilizes CYMK ink.
Also, you cannot use this printing technique on spout pouches that will hold food.
This is because the ink used is not allowed under food and drug administration regulations that guide food packaging.
Generating custom colors for your spout pouches is very hard since the printing techniques use the CYMK color range better.
They are expensive if you use longer runs.
You can only use digital printing on certain papers and the range of papers used here are not robust.
Spout pouches that have been printed using the digital printing technique tend to fade faster when in direct sunlight compared to other printing techniques.
Flexographic Printing Spout Pouches
Flexo printing illustration
You use this technique for simple surface printing.
The technique uses a flexible photopolymer plate which you wrap around a rotating cylinder for each color you have.
The texts of each color are then raised from the surface of the plate.
Only the raised areas on the surface of the plate are inked hence printed.
It is a low-cost printing technique and is used to print easy texts and images.
This printing technique is popular in printing high volumes of labels on the spout pouches.
Advantages Of Flexographic Printing Spout Pouch
The advantages are;
Its versatility; it is versatile meaning you can use it on any nonabsorbent material.
When you compare it to rotogravure printing, it is a very fast printing technique.
The Flexographic printing technique supports a wide range of colors compared to other printing techniques.
You can use the flexographic printing technique with both water-based inks and oil-based inks in the printing of your spout pouches.
Limitations Of Flexographic Printing Spout Pouches
The technique is not advanced hence cannot produce complicated and extensive artwork on your spout pouch.
The end colors on the printed spout pouch used by this technique are not bold compared to other printing techniques.
If you desire to have high-end images, the flexographic printing technique will not deliver this for you.
The flexographic printing technique design process is less dynamic since it’s an old technique.
Benefits of Printed Spout Pouched
Several benefits printed spout pouches have.
They include the following;
Printed spout pouches
Sustainable
This is because they occupy less space and so many printed spout pouches are transported by car.
And when transportation space is less, it is equated to less fuel used.
Therefore, with less fuel consumption you have low carbon emissions.
Durability
When compared to alternative packaging styles, the printed spout pouches are durable.
Due to this, you are guaranteed that the packaging and contents inside are not compromised.
This simply means that you will have minimized the number of customer complaints significantly.
Branding
The printed spout pouches make your branding powerful yet simpler, efficient, and productive.
This is because they provide complete control in terms of graphics compared to alternative packaging.
Also, the printed spout pouches have attractive shapes that make the customer differentiate them and can stand on shelves.
This makes them easy to be ingrained in the consumers’ minds.
Economical
The printed spout pouches cost less compared to alternative packaging.
This makes them the most economical yet the best option for packaging.
Eco friendly
The printed spout pouches are significantly less plastic.
This means they are manufactured from natural resources than rigid plastics.
Conclusion
Therefore, the printed spout pouches are the best choice of flexible packaging.
This is because they are cost-effective and also do not allow the compromise of contents and packaging.
Further Reading:
Artwork For Printing On Spout Pouches
Spout Pouch Buying Guide For Start-up Businesses
In case you have any questions or inquiry about spout pouches, contact us now.