Labels by Industry
A label fails because of where it ends up, not because of what industry it came from. Each section below starts with the conditions the label has to survive, then gives the material and process that hold up under them.
Wet wipes & household · Personal care · Beverage · Food · Pharmaceutical · Industrial & chemical
Across every industry the envelope is the same: web width 320–350 mm as standard, 450 mm maximum, up to 12 + 2 colours flexo, and 100 % web inspection on every order.
Wet Wipes and Household Chemicals
Our largest single product category by volume. A wet wipes lid label is one of the hardest jobs in the industry: it sits on a flexible pack, gets opened and closed hundreds of times, and is in permanent contact with a wet surfactant surface. Most label failures here are adhesive failures, not print failures.
| Conditions | Constant moisture and surfactant contact, repeated opening, flexing packs, bleach and detergent splash |
| Material | Synthetic and clear BOPP for waterproofing and tear resistance; PET where solvent resistance matters |
| Process | Flexo up to 12 + 2 colours, gloss or matt lamination, rotary die-cutting, roll delivery for automated applicators |
| Watch out for | The adhesive decides whether this label lives or dies. Tell us the substrate and whether the pack is re-opened — a permanent adhesive on a resealable lid is the most common specification error we see. |
Personal Care and Cosmetics
This is where decoration carries the product. A cosmetics label is judged on the shelf before anyone reads it, and it then has to survive a bathroom — steam, wet hands, oil and daily handling.
| Conditions | Humidity, wet handling, oils and creams, squeezed and deformed containers, long shelf display |
| Material | PE for squeeze tubes and soft bottles; clear BOPP for the no-label look on glass and clear plastic; metallized stock for premium lines |
| Process | Hot foil, inline and offline cold foil, embossing, matt lamination, screen printing for tactile effects, white ink under colour on clear and metallic stock |
| Watch out for | Brand colour consistency across repeat orders. We hold spot colours under Esko Color Pilot rather than matching by eye — send your Pantone references with the artwork. |
Beverage, Beer, Wine and Spirits
Two different jobs sit in this category. Mass-market drinks need a label that survives condensation and ice buckets at the lowest workable cost. Wine and spirits need decoration — foil, texture, weight — because the label is most of what the buyer is paying for.
| Conditions | Condensation, ice water immersion, chilled storage, wet filling lines, high-speed application |
| Material | Clear BOPP for the no-label look on bottles; synthetic BOPP for wet and chilled conditions; textured and uncoated paper for craft and premium spirits |
| Process | Hot foil and cold foil, embossing, screen printing for raised detail, white ink base on clear film, rotary die-cutting, roll delivery wound to your applicator direction |
| Watch out for | Food-contact compliant stock is available to FDA, EU 10/2011 and GB 4806, with the material supplier’s declaration of conformity supplied against the order. Tell us which standard your market requires before we quote — it can change the face stock. |
Short runs and limited editions can go on the digital line from one piece — useful for seasonal releases and label trials before committing to plates.
Food Packaging and Cold Chain
Food labels split by temperature. Ambient dry goods are straightforward. Chilled, frozen and oily products are not — an adhesive that grips at room temperature can let go at minus twenty, and a paper face stock that looks fine on the shelf turns translucent against a greasy surface.
| Conditions | Freezer storage, condensation on removal from cold, oil and sauce contact, wet application on chilled surfaces, overprinting of dates and weights on your line |
| Material | Coated and kraft paper for ambient dry goods; synthetic BOPP for chilled, frozen and oily products; synthetic paper where tear resistance matters |
| Process | Flexo and letterpress, printable matt varnish so your line can overprint batch codes and weights, lamination, rotary die-cutting, roll delivery |
| Watch out for | State the application temperature and the storage temperature separately — they are often different, and the adhesive is chosen on the lower of the two. Food-contact compliant stock is available to FDA, EU 10/2011 and GB 4806, with the material supplier’s declaration of conformity supplied against the order. |
Low and high temperature performance is tested in-house — see our label laboratory, which runs a drying oven to 300 °C and a freezer to −45 °C.
Pharmaceutical, Medical and Nutraceutical
The distinguishing requirement here is not print quality, it is traceability and defect tolerance. A wrong or unreadable code on a medical label is a recall, not a complaint. This is the category our inspection capability was built for.
| Conditions | Refrigerated and frozen storage, sterilisation, small curved containers, blood bags and flexible pouches, mandatory serialisation and barcode grading |
| Material | PET and polyimide for temperature and solvent resistance; synthetic paper for flexible pouches and bags |
| Process | Variable data and serialisation, barcode grading to ISO/IEC 15415/15416 on a Microscan LVS-9510, and 100 % web inspection on every order — seven high-speed inspection machines plus two inline vision systems |
| Watch out for | Pharmaceutical labelling is regulated market by market. We are ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certified and produce to your specified material and construction, but we do not hold pharmaceutical-specific certification — tell us the standard you are audited against and we will tell you plainly whether we meet it. |
Our inspection control system is our own — registered software copyright 2018SR581701. Defect detection here is not a bought-in module bolted onto someone else’s press.
Industrial, Chemical and Automotive
The most demanding conditions we print for. Lubricant drums, agrochemical containers and engine bay components subject a label to heat, solvents, UV and abrasion at the same time — and the label often has to stay legible for the life of the product, not the life of the packaging.
| Conditions | Engine heat, solvent and oil contact, acids and alkalis, outdoor UV exposure, abrasion in transit, rough and low-energy surfaces such as drums and jerry cans |
| Material | PET and polyimide for heat, solvents and electronics; metallized stock for nameplates and asset tags; synthetic BOPP for chemical drums and agrochemicals |
| Process | Corona treatment for low-energy films, lamination and varnish for abrasion resistance, variable data for batch and serial coding, slitting up to 450 mm |
| Watch out for | Hazard labelling for chemicals carries legal content and format requirements in each market — the wording and symbols are your responsibility, the durability is ours. Tell us the maximum service temperature and the chemicals involved. |
Restricted-metals screening is available in-house by XRF to IEC 62321, with accredited third-party testing for the full substance report where your customer requires it.
Not Sure Which Material Fits?
Describe the container and the conditions the label has to survive. We will specify the stock, and print a sample from one piece before you commit to a run.