Product labels are a legal requirement. Other than meeting a legal obligation, however, they communicate different elements concerning your product. Ensuring the labels remain intact until they get to the final consumer is essential.
This is however not easy owing to the environmental and handling conditions during your products’ packing, transportation, and selling. A protective coating is an ideal solution for your bar code labels in New Zealand (NZ), notes T & D Print.
There are many protective coating options but laminating, varnishing, and UV coatings are the most common. They protect your label’s ink from scuffing or smearing and increase the aesthetic appeal of your label.
In varnishing, a transparent silicon layer is applied over your label to highlight its details and protect the information. Here are the varnish types used for product labels.
Gloss Varnish
This provides a lustrous look to your label and enhances the depth of its colours. A gloss varnish has outstanding adhesion to both UV-cured and water-based printing inks on all kinds of labelling substrates.
The most common gloss varnish type is UV gloss which is typically used to heighten the brilliance of water-based inks. Gloss varnish is suitable for labels used on indoor products like foods and pharmaceuticals.
Matte Varnish
This coating is used to create a muted or subtle label look thus enhancing its elegance. The colours of your labels in this instance might appear a bit off shade, but they still stand out.
A matte label varnish is generally used on elegant and luxurious products. The muted look also serves to make the product rather than your label stand out.
Soft Touch Varnish
This is a specialty varnish meant to enhance the feel of your label to touch. Most companies nowadays use screen printing for their labels to retain the label’s tactile feel.
Screen printing is however limited to the use of three colours and hence mostly inefficient. A soft touch varnish allows you to use as many colours as you desire for the label and still get a soft velvety feel with a matte appearance.
Braille Varnish
This varnish is designed for Braille fonts. It forms a surface layer that makes the discerning of Braille easy and withstands several stresses — including those of transportation, hence the message is not distorted.
Braille varnish should meet industry-specified standards for the dots used. It is the best choice for companies looking to come across as inclusive for all people irrespective of their disabilities.
Thermal Imprintable Varnish
This varnish is suitable for the excellent receptivity of resin-based or wax thermal transfer ribbons. Thermal imprintable varnishes come in matte and high gloss finishes. They are usually used to imprint on-demand information, expiration dates and lot codes on top of your label.
Your product label comprises three layers including the adhesive, substrate and top coat. Most people ignore the need for the top coat and thus count significant losses in smudged labels.
With the varnish coatings mentioned above to protect your label and enhance different elements on it, you are sure that it will meet your business goals.
