Digital Printing VS. Traditional Gravure Printing

Digital Printing VS. Traditional Gravure Printing

Which one to go with? Which is better?

For the clients who have no experience in ordering custom printed packaging pouches and bags before, when they consider purchasing flexible packaging bags and pouches for new business or new products, the biggest concern is which is a more suitable and cost-effective solution between digital printing and traditional gravure printing.

How to decide? let’s break it down for You in detail.

A custom printed pouch project case analysis

For example, when a company develops a new product, the company needs to do a trial run before launching onto the market in bulk formally.

1. One series for the new product includes 4 SKUs/designs (So the sales turnover later will show which SKUs are more popular.).
2. Each SKUs/design generally has 4-8 colors.
3. Let’s assume 5 colors per design and 3 SKUs/designs in this case.

Flexible packaging digital printing solution

At the start-up stage, it is more reasonable to go with digital printing. Although digital printing cost per square meter is 10 times more than that of traditional gravure printing, it omits the cost and time of plate making.

With digital printing, once the design is finished and the proofreading files are approved, we can start the job and produce flexible packaging right away. No money and time will be spent in making printing plates/cylinders.

Fast and responsive, we quickly turn ideas into products onto the market for testing and data tracking.

Another Digital Printing Key Feature

Digital printing order quantity can be as small order quantity as 200pcs per SKU/design. So you can arrange even 5 SKUs/designs in one order among a small 1000pcs custom order.

The initial investment is very controlled and limited.

Flexible packaging traditional gravure printing

Under the same conditions, if we go with traditional gravure printing at the start-up stage, we need to make 3×5=15 plates/cylinders.

Each plate costs about US$95 (Further detailed price depending on the size, ranging from US$69 to US$300), in total US$1425 for merely plates/cylinders.

What’s more, the minimum order quantity is 10000pcs per design, above US$800 per SKU so USD2400 more is needed in extra for 40000pcs bags.

In sum, at least US$3825 was invested initially for developing the first batch of flexible packaging.

The tragedy is if the product feedback is not good, these inputs will bring us little profit, and the flexible packaging bags and pouches turn into inventory, causing serious economic losses to the company.

Traditional Gravure Printing Key Feature

But we can find out traditional gravure printing brings us better unit price when we are in need of a large quantity of bags.

US$3825 for 40000pcs, each bag only cost US$0.096, far more cheaper than the digital printed pouches unit prices.

Conclusion

 

Digital Printing and Traditional Gravure Printing make up for each other.

Combined together, offering us a complete solution for the different business stages and scenarios.

In summary, digital printing is suitable for color-rich, multi-SKUs, small batch production or for a super high added value products like cannabis. When business grows bigger, we then use traditional gravure printing to balance the packaging cost.

Gozen packaging provides both digital printing and traditional gravure printing, both at moderate and affordable prices.

Popular bag styles like flat pouches, sachets, stand up pouches, flat bottom bags are covered. Do feel free to contact us via info@gozenpackaging and WhatsApp +8618571566509, our sales will get back to you the soonest.