Metallized stock is where a label printer either shows its quality or gets found out. A register error that would pass unnoticed on white paper appears as a bright silver sliver along the edge of a solid. We print it on 12-colour flexo presses in a temperature and humidity controlled shop, and inspect every roll before it leaves.
Which silver you actually want
| Stock | What it is | We would use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Metallized PET (met-PET) | Polyester film with a vacuum-deposited aluminium layer | Rating plates, asset tags, anything facing heat or solvents |
| Bright silver film | Metallized polypropylene | Cosmetics, beverages, retail — where the look matters more than the environment |
The two look nearly identical on a sample card and behave very differently at 120 °C or after two years outdoors. Tell us where the label lives and we will pick — this is the sort of call a trading company cannot make for you.
Finishes we print
| Bright silver | Mirror-like, the standard metallized finish |
| Matt silver | Brushed appearance, hides fingerprints and surface marks |
| Tinted metallic | Gold, bronze and colour effects printed over the silver base |
| Spot metallic | White ink masks the areas that should not look metallic |
The last one is worth understanding, because it saves you a tooling charge. A metallized face is silver everywhere until something covers it. We lay opaque white over the areas you want plain, giving you metal exactly where the design calls for it — logo, border, panel — with normal colour everywhere else. No foil stamping die required.
Short runs without a plate
Our digital press carries white ink as its fifth colour. On a metallized face that changes the economics: the white underprint and the colour layer go down in one pass, so a metallic label no longer needs a plate cut before you can see it on the actual container.
- Samples from one piece — put a real label on a real product before committing
- Short production runs without tooling cost
- Variant testing — several designs on the same order
- Scale up to the 12-colour presses once the design is settled, same factory, same quality system
The press room
| Printing processes | Flexo · intermittent letterpress · screen · digital UV inkjet |
| Web width | 320–350 mm standard, 450 mm maximum |
| Colours | Flexo up to 12 + 2 · Letterpress up to 7 + 1 · Digital CMYK + white |
| Platemaking | In-house — Esko CDI laser imager, DuPont thermal processing |
| Finishing | 8 die-cutters · hot foil stamping · lamination · slitting · variable data coding |
| Inspection | 7 high-speed inspection machines, 2 inline vision systems |
| Minimum order | One piece on the digital line |
In-house platemaking matters more on metallized work than anywhere else. When a solid needs to move a fraction of a millimetre to close a silver gap, we remake the plate here the same day instead of waiting on a supplier.
What to send us
- Label size, and which edge runs in the web direction
- Whether you need mirror bright or matt brushed silver
- What the label is applied to, and whether that surface gets hot, wet or oily
- Whether any area should look plain rather than metallic
- Quantity, and whether you need roll or sheet
Related: All materials we print on · PET labels · BOPP labels · Factory equipment