We are here to help you avoid problems that may affect the quality of your job or impact upon our ability to meet your print deadlines. We want to ensure that your job is successful for you and your customer so if you have any questions pre-production or during processing give us a call and make use of our technical expertise gained over 35 years in foiling and embossing.

Foils and Foiling
Most Foils are opaque and cover up any image below. It is not necessary to reverse out for the print for the foill image otherwise this leads to potential problems of image registration. This is the most common error that we see and it is the easiest to avoid.

Grip and Lay edges

• Up to SRA3 , use offside lay with grip
• Over SRA3, use nearside lay with grip

When planning the sheet please ensure that you allow for 25mm between the grip edge and the nearest image. Although we can work below 25mm this is subject to the nature of the stock and image.

Paper Grammage and Board Thickness
We are able to work with most stocks , grammages and thicknesses and set out below are general guidelines for different sheet sizes.

• Up to SRA3 , minimum grammage of - 80gsm
• Over SRA3 , minimum grammage of - 90 gsm
• Over B1 , minimum grammage of - 100 gsm

If your job requires large coverage foil and falls below the above guidelines please contact us for technical assistance. We are always happy to trial your stock to ensure that it will process without difficulty. We can process board up to 1000 microns subject to board size and specification.

PVC, APet and plastics
We process over 4 million sheets of plastics, pvc and apets each year and all of our equipment is fitted with anti-static devices as standard. If you have questions on the full range of material that we are able to process please contact us. These surfaces are more difficult to foil than papers and require a different range of foils and techniques.

Varnishes and Coatings
As a general rule any surface to which foil is applied needs to be wax and silicon free with a surface tension level above 36 dynes per sq cm and below 40 dynes per sq cm. Outside of these parameters difficulty can arise which may result in your job requiring a reprint. We recommend a standard surface tension level of 38 dynes. We are always happy to test first off sheets and proofings in order to ensure that difficulties do not arise.

Foils can generally be applied to gloss and matt varnish surfaces although difficulty can be experienced with certain types of foil and image. If you have any doubt about the suitability of the coating for foiling then we are happy to advise and test the coating.

Where spot varnishes are being used we recommend that the varnish is applied after foiling. Despite the considerable development of foils it is still not yet possible to foil over a spot UV area.

When sealing a printed job, aqueous sealants are preferred to solvent based sealants. We also recommend that you plan for a minimum of 24 hours between applying the sealant and commencing the foiling process.

Film Lamination
Most gloss and matt OPP laminates are foil blockable and our advice is to specify foil blockable lamination to your laminator. Lamination when applied over a foiled image can dull the foiled image slightly. If in doubt about the suitability of OPP laminate then acetate laminates are the preferred solution.

Overprinting of foiled areas
We regularly undertake work requiring overprinting and is a process often used, particularly within the toothpaste packaging markets. Best results come from using foils containing low levels of wax used in combination with conventional lithographic print processes. Occasional modification of the ink may be required and we always recommend undertaking a full test of the combination of foil and ink prior to production.