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Material
Steel,
not plastic.
Tinplate at 0.23 millimetres. What it is, why it prints better, and how it recycles.
What tinplate is
Tinplate is steel with a microscopic tin coating — a few hundred nanometres, applied electrolytically. The steel gives the structure, the tin stops it corroding.
At 0.23 millimetres it holds its shape through distribution without flexing or cracking, and it takes a drawn form that plastic cannot hold at the same wall thickness.
Why it prints better
Ink sits on a lithographed metal surface differently to a moulded plastic one. Colour stays dense, edges stay sharp, and a matte finish stays matte rather than scuffing to a shine in transit.
Every format is matched to your Pantone across matte, gloss and metallic, with embossing and spot decoration available on selected sizes.
How it recycles
Steel is the most recycled material in the world and the stream already exists. A tinplate pack goes through kerbside collection with food cans, and magnetic separation pulls it out automatically.
A liner holding a seal is a second material, and it has to come out before the steel goes in the stream. The Eco specification is the build without one — all tinplate, nothing to separate — and it can be applied to any format we make.
Printing on metal is not printing on paper
Artwork is lithographed onto flat sheet and the tin is formed afterwards. That is why colour density holds and why there is no label edge to lift — the decoration is part of the surface rather than applied over it.
It also means artwork stretches wherever the metal draws. Deep-drawn areas distort predictably, and the dieline compensates for it before anything goes to plate.
Decoration
How colour behaves on tinplate.
- Process
- Offset lithography on flat sheet, cured before forming
- Colour
- Pantone matched over a white base coat — without it the substrate reads through and shifts the hue
- Metallics
- Run direct to bare substrate, using the tinplate itself rather than a metallic ink
- Finishes
- Gloss, matte, textured and soft-touch varnish
- Forming
- Artwork distorts over drawn areas; the dieline compensates before plate
- Registration
- Confirmed per format at proofing, and approved by you before any volume runs
The white base coat is the reason a Pantone on metal and the same Pantone on a carton will never be an exact visual match. We proof both together when a pack has to sit inside a printed box.