FFP Packaging Solutions

News: The UK's BEST Flexible Packaging

FFP Packaging Solutions of Northampton have won Gold in the annual FlexoTech awards for ‘Best Printed Flexible Packaging on web width of 50cm and above’ for a design for Armitage’s Pet Products.

The design presented a number of distinct challenges. The dark brown in the background is a strong, dense colour that needs to fade smoothly into the softer and warmer shades, the choc drops themselves also need to blend subtly into the background while the photographic image of the puppy has to be clear and stand out in the foreground.

FFP’s print team decided to form the background and images from process colours rather than using a special dark brown, to give a much smoother look overall. Having made that decision presented a new challenge of achieving a sufficient colour density to reproduce the brown at the right Pantone colour reference without losing depth. A very thin filler bar was also added at the process plate joint to make the background continuous and seamless.

FFP’s award was presented at the Hilton London Metropole hotel by the BBC sports presenter Claire Balding.

UK Packaging Awards

The UK Packaging Awards have become the gold standard for packaging, and FFP were delighted to WIN the category for best Flexible Plastic Packaging, for the new range of Marks and Spencer crispbakes and fishcakes, part of the retailers complete redesign of the crispbake and fishcake ranges. The full range consists of twelve product lines across the two complementary product groups. Marks and Spencer went for a consistent look and feel, with a deep black offset by a different colour cue in the body of the pack and on the end seals. That allows easy differentiation of the packs on the part of the customer and provides an interesting and varied shelf display while maintaining the coherence of identity needed to establish the range as an entity.

From a packaging printer’s perspective, the design’s challenges were to bring out the photographic detail of a visually homogenous range of products within the attractive main body image to give the customer the opportunity to easily identify product variation, without compromising the depth and vibrancy of the black body and coloured seal ends that provides the range with its identity. An added complication was the choice of a jagged edged font in the titling and body styles, which presented FFP with the challenge of printing with enough density to provide a dense solid colour without ‘filling-in’ the edges of the type.

The award ceremony was at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, presented by the BBC Breakfast's Bill Turnbull.

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