Die-cutting & conversion
Everything before this
page was flat
Structural design, an in-house die shop, autoplaten cutting, stripping, folding and gluing. This is where a printed sheet stops being a graphic and becomes an object that has to survive a supply chain nobody designed for it.
The discipline
A carton is a structure before it is a surface.
Most packaging failures are structural and they present as graphic complaints. The board cracks at the crease and the brand sees a broken logo. The glue seam creeps and the retailer sees a skewed facing. The tuck flap is a millimetre proud and the filling line sees a jam at four hundred packs a minute.
So the structure is designed first, sampled in white board, filled with the real product, and dropped — before anyone opens the artwork file.
We will send you a plain white box. It tells you more than a rendering ever will.
Choose a structure
Nine formats cover most of what ships
Select a style to see its standard code, what it is for, and the thing about it that usually goes wrong. Anything not here, we draw from scratch.
Straight tuck end
Carton style
Straight tuck end
Both tuck flaps hinge from the same panel, so the back panel carries no visible flap edge. The standard choice where the face of the carton is the selling surface.
ECMA A1050-RANGE · GLUED SIDE SEAM · HAND OR SEMI-AUTOMATIC FILL
Codes shown are the standard reference families — ECMA for folding cartons, FEFCO for corrugated. The exact code is confirmed on the approved die-line drawing issued with every tooling order.
The die shop
We make our own tools, which is why we can argue about them
A cutting die is eighteen millimetres of birch ply, laser-cut to the die-line, with steel rule driven into the kerf by hand. Everything that matters about it is a judgement: rule height against board caliper, creasing matrix width and depth, the durometer of the ejection rubber, and the size and position of every nick holding the blank in the sheet.
A die bought in is a die you cannot adjust at two in the morning. Ours are made on site, corrected on site, and stored with the job — so a repeat order in four years runs on the tool that was proven, not a new one that has to be proven again.
| Tooling | Held and recorded |
|---|---|
| Die board | Laser-cut birch ply · rule set by hand |
| Cutting rule | Point size and bevel selected against board grade |
| Creasing rule | Matrix width and depth calculated from caliper and grain |
| Nicks | Sized and positioned to hold the blank without tearing at strip |
| Ejection | Rubber durometer matched to panel size and waste geometry |
| Stripping tools | Upper and lower stripping boards made with the die |
| Grain direction | Specified on the drawing · carton stiffness depends on it |
| Storage | Die, drawing and approved sample archived under the job number |
The line
Cut, strip, fold, glue
Autoplaten Die-Cutting
Flatbed platen cutting to 1,020 × 720 mm with in-line stripping. Board, laminated board and specialty stocks up to 450 gsm.
Rotary & Hollow-Die
Rotary die-cutting on the web for labels and tickets, and hollow-die cutting for hangtags, strung tickets and shaped inserts.
Folder-Gluing
Straight-line, crash-lock bottom and four- and six-corner gluing. Multi-point gluing for structures that have to erect on an automatic filling line.
Window Patching
Clear and anti-fog film applied to die-cut apertures, including recycled-stream-friendly constructions where the patch separates cleanly.
Rigid Box
Two-piece and hinged setup boxes, litho-laminate wrapped, with magnet closures, ribbon pulls and fitted platforms for gifting and premium retail.
Fitments & Inserts
Board platforms, pulp and corrugated fitments engineered to hold the product still — because most transit damage is the product hitting its own packaging.
Proof it survives
Tolerances, and the tests that check them
| Check | Held to |
|---|---|
| Crease position | ±0.3 mm from the approved die-line |
| Blank dimension | ±0.5 mm across the cut blank |
| Squareness | Formed carton square within specification on all four corners |
| Glue seam | Minimum overlap held · fibre tear on destructive test, not peel |
| Crease cracking | Scored and folded against grain and checked at the fold face |
| Compression | Box compression assessed for stack height and pallet pattern |
| Transit | Drop and vibration to an ISTA-family protocol where specified |
| Line trial | Erection and fill trialled on the customer's own machine before release |
Where a brand's own protocol is stricter than ours, theirs governs. We would rather run to your specification than defend ours.
Material discipline
The regulation is about what happens after delivery
The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation applies to imported packaging, not just packaging made in the Union. Recyclability, minimisation and empty-space limits are now design constraints — and they are set at the die-line, not at the print stage.
Empty Space
Void volume assessed at structural design and reported. The cheapest carbon saving in packaging is the air you stop shipping.
Grammage Reduction
Board grade stepped down where stiffness allows it, proven on compression rather than assumed. Often the same performance at a lower caliper.
Mono-Material
Laminate removed where a coating will do the same job, so the pack stays in the paper recycling stream instead of leaving it.
Imposition Yield
Blanks nested for maximum sheet yield. Matrix waste is baled, weighed and returned to the mill stream rather than landfilled.
FSC® Board
Certified board available across the carton grades with chain-of-custody documentation tied to the job.
PPWR-Ready Drawings
Die-lines reviewed against recyclability criteria at design stage, so the compliance conversation happens before the tool is cut.
Next
Then the last two per cent
Foil, emboss and spot UV are applied before folding and gluing, in the same building, on the same job ticket. Nothing leaves for a finishing house and comes back short.
Begin
Send us the specification
A die-line, a sample, a photograph of something you want matched — or just the product and its dimensions. We will draw the structure and send you a white sample before anything is committed.