Packaging, Food Cartons & Boxes

Packaging starts with one question: does this box go near food? If it does, the board has to be virgin fiber. Food-safe kraft and SBS are what we use for restaurant takeout, bakery goods, and anything that touches grease or condensation. Greyback duplex is cheaper per gram, but it is not rated for direct food contact.

Retail product cartons are usually duplex board with a greyback, which prints well on the coated face and keeps volume runs affordable. Rigid setup boxes at 1500 GSM are a different product: handcrafted, heavy, and kept by the customer. Add waterproof matte film when the box will sit in a cold cabinet or a delivery bag.

Every carton is die-cut, which means a steel rule die is made to the exact profile of your box. The die is a one-time cost, stored for repeat runs, which is why first orders look expensive and reorders get cheaper.

Folding cartons print flat in sheets, laminate if the spec calls for it, then cut and crease in the same die pass. Rigid setup boxes are built differently: the board is cut to size and wrapped by hand, and the corners finished by gluing. That slower work is why rigid boxes carry the price they do.

The common structural mistake is forgetting the glue tab and the tuck flap. A dieline is not just an outline; it includes the flaps and the overlap that holds the carton together. Send us the dieline before the artwork and we will tell you where it folds.

The second is designing panels to the trim edge. Logos and barcodes need to sit inside the safe margin, and a barcode that lands on a fold will not scan. We check both during the 300 DPI CMYK file review before plating.