Kraft and Coated Paper Labels
Paper stock is the right answer more often than the label industry likes to admit. If the product is dry, sold indoors and recycled with its packaging, film adds cost and takes away the natural look buyers are paying for.
Kraft or Coated?
Both are paper. They behave differently under ink, and they say different things on a shelf.
| Uncoated kraft | Coated paper | |
|---|---|---|
| Appearance | Natural brown, visible fibre, matt | Smooth white, even surface |
| Ink behaviour | Absorbs ink — colours sit muted and warm against the brown base | Holds ink on the surface — bright, accurate colour and fine detail |
| White ink | Needed for any light or white element, since the base is brown | Not needed |
| Photographic images | Not suited — detail softens as ink spreads into the fibre | Suited |
| Cost and supply | Quoted per enquiry — we confirm the stock price with our supplier before quoting | Held in stock, our lowest-cost face stock |
| Choose it for | Organic food, craft beverage, soap and candles, artisan and refill brands | Cartons, dry goods, instruction labels, anything where colour accuracy matters more than texture |
Neither stock is waterproof. If the pack gets wet, chilled or oily, use synthetic paper or BOPP film instead — a laminated paper label buys some resistance but the edges still wick.
Specification
| Face stock | Uncoated kraft in natural brown, and coated paper in white. Textured and laid papers available to order. |
| Surface finish | Uncoated for the natural feel, or gloss varnish, matt varnish, gloss and matt lamination where the label needs protecting. Printable matt varnish where your line overprints dates and batch codes. |
| Web width | 320–350 mm standard, 450 mm maximum |
| Colours | Up to 12 + 2 flexo, 7 + 1 letterpress, CMYK plus white on the digital line |
| Decoration | Hot foil, inline and offline cold foil, embossing, screen printing for heavy ink and texture, white ink underprint on kraft |
| Finishing | Flatbed and rotary die-cutting, slitting to 450 mm, rolls to your core and unwind direction, or sheets |
| Adhesive | Permanent, removable and freezer-grade — tell us the surface and the application temperature |
| Lead time | Coated paper is held in stock. Kraft is bought to order, so we confirm material availability and price before committing to a delivery date. |
Printing on Brown: What Actually Happens
Most disappointing kraft labels come from artwork designed on a white screen and printed on a brown substrate. Three things are worth knowing before you approve a design.
- Nothing prints white unless you print white. Kraft has no white base. Any pale element needs a white underprint laid down first, which we do on both the conventional and the digital line.
- Colours shift warm and lose saturation. A blue on kraft reads greener and duller than the same blue on coated stock. We hold spot colours under Esko Color Pilot and will proof on the actual stock rather than guessing from a screen.
- Fine detail closes up. Uncoated fibre absorbs ink and spreads it. Hairlines, small reversed-out type and fine screens need opening up at prepress — we do that in-house and will flag it when we see it in your artwork.
This is a good reason to take a digital sample first. One piece on the real stock tells you more than any proof on paper.
Custom Shapes and Die-Cutting
Eight die-cutting units, flatbed and rotary. Die-cutting is one of our strongest areas of capacity, which matters when a shaped label would otherwise become the bottleneck in your order.
| Standard shapes | Rectangle, rounded rectangle, square, circle, oval — usually from existing tooling at no extra cost |
| Custom shapes | Any outline you supply as vector artwork. A new die is charged once and reused on every repeat order. |
| Rotary die-cutting | Faster and cleaner on long runs, and produces a sharper edge on paper stock |
| Digital die-cutting | No tooling at all — used for samples and short runs, so you can test a shape before paying for a die |
| Extras | Hole punching for hang tags, perforation between labels, kiss-cut or through-cut |
Send the shape as vector artwork with the cut line on its own layer. If you already have tooling from a previous supplier, tell us the die dimensions — it can often be reused.
The Recyclability Question, Answered Honestly
Kraft looks recyclable, and buyers often assume that settles it. A self-adhesive label is three layers — face, adhesive and release liner — and each one affects the claim you are allowed to make.
- The paper face is recyclable with the packaging it is applied to, as long as the label is not laminated with film
- The adhesive determines whether the label separates cleanly during repulping — a recycling-compatible adhesive is a specific product, not a default
- The release liner is waste at your end, not the consumer’s. Glassine liners are recyclable through dedicated streams where those exist in your market
Tell us which standard or scheme you are certifying against and we will source stock that qualifies and supply the supplier documentation with the order. We do not attach environmental claims to a quotation that we cannot put a document behind.
What we can evidence on our own side: ISO 14001:2015 certified (cert. 10426E00743R201, valid to August 2029), solar generation with battery storage on site since 2022, and a granted patent covering the conversion of label waste paper into adhesive tape. Compostable constructions are covered on the synthetic paper page.
Typical Applications
| Organic and artisan food | Jars, pouches and cartons for dry goods, preserves, coffee and tea |
| Craft beverage | Beer, cider and spirits where an uncoated label signals small-batch production |
| Soap, candles and cosmetics | Natural and refill brands, often combined with foil or embossing for contrast against the brown stock |
| Cartons and outer packaging | Coated paper for shipping marks, content labels and address panels |
| Hang tags and swing tickets | Punched and die-cut, in kraft or coated board |
See also food packaging and beverage applications.
See It on the Real Stock
Kraft never looks on paper the way it looks on screen. Our digital line prints from a single label, so you can hold the real thing before committing to a die and a run.