Rotary letterpress · care labels
The one part of a garment
that must outlive the garment
Six colours to the face, two to the reverse, in a single pass — then cut ultrasonically so the sealed edge never scratches the neck. Pakistan's first rotary letterpress was installed on this floor, and it was installed to solve a problem no other process could.
Why letterpress
Satin will not take lithographic ink.
A care label is printed on woven polyester satin, taffeta or nylon — a surface that moves under tension, absorbs unevenly and refuses the thin ink film every other process is built to lay. Rotary letterpress presses a heavy, opaque film directly onto the weave. That is why a 1.5 pt symbol is still readable after fifty domestic washes, and why a flexo-printed equivalent is grey and broken by the twentieth.
Six stations print the face. Two more print the reverse in the same pass, so the fibre composition on the back registers to the care symbols on the front without a second handling. Then ultrasonic cutting seals the edge as it severs it — no fray, no hem, no scratch.
Nobody has ever complimented a care label. Several million people have simply never had to think about one.
The line
What the press holds
| Parameter | Capability |
|---|---|
| Process | Rotary letterpress · Pakistan's first installation |
| Colour | 6 face + 2 reverse in one pass · spot and process |
| Substrates | Polyester satin, taffeta, nylon, cotton twill, non-woven, Tyvek®, TPU |
| Widths | Narrow-web, multi-lane · label widths from 10 mm |
| Cutting | Ultrasonic seal-cut · straight, centre-fold and end-fold in line |
| Fold formats | Straight cut, end fold, centre fold, loop, mitre, book, Manhattan |
| Type minimum | 1.5 pt symbol and 4 pt text held legible on satin |
| Languages | Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, CJK and RTL setting in one artwork |
| Data | QR and DataMatrix carriers · sequential size, lot and style data |
| Output | Cut and stacked, boxed by size and colourway, or supplied on roll |
Woven labels, heat-transfer labels and RFID-bearing constructions are produced to the same specification through partner mills under our own inspection protocol. Where a component is not made in this building, the quotation says so.
Specify the format
The fold decides the machine it is sewn on
Choose a format to see what it is for and what it costs you downstream. Garment factories reject more labels for the wrong fold than for the wrong print — the sewing line cannot improvise.
Straight cut
Fold format
Straight cut
Cut and sealed on all four sides, sewn on one edge or caught in a seam. The cheapest format and the least forgiving — the whole label is visible, so print position has nowhere to hide.
SEWN — ONE EDGE OR IN-SEAM · LOWEST COST · HIGHEST PRINT-POSITION TOLERANCE REQUIRED
Compliance
A care label is a legal document printed on cloth
It carries obligations in every market the garment enters, and the obligations do not agree with one another. Getting this wrong is not a quality issue — it is a customs issue, and it happens at the border rather than at the mill.
ISO 3758 · GINETEX
The five-symbol care sequence — wash, bleach, dry, iron, professional care — in the order the standard fixes. Symbol-only labelling for the EU market.
16 CFR 423
The FTC Care Labeling Rule requires care instruction in words, not symbols alone, plus fibre content under the Textile Fiber Products Identification Act and the RN number.
Reg. 1007/2011
Fibre composition in the official language of every member state where the garment is sold, using only the permitted fibre names. This is where the twenty-two languages come from.
CPSIA Tracking
Permanent tracking label with manufacturer, location, date and batch for children's products entering the United States.
OEKO-TEX® & ZDHC
Ink systems specified against OEKO-TEX® STANDARD 100 requirements including baby-class limits, and against the ZDHC MRSL and customer restricted-substance lists.
Digital Product Passport
A machine-readable carrier on every textile sold in the Union. The care label is the only component already permanently attached — which is why it is where the carrier lands.
Testing
Legibility is tested, not assumed
A care label fails slowly. By the time the complaint reaches you it is attached to four seasons of stock. So it is tested before it ships, against the abuse the garment will actually receive.
| Test | Method and target |
|---|---|
| Domestic laundering | ISO 6330 · legibility held through the cycle count specified by the brand, to 50 |
| Colourfastness to washing | ISO 105-C06 · no transfer to adjacent fabric |
| Colourfastness to rubbing | ISO 105-X12 · dry and wet crocking |
| Dry cleaning | ISO 3175 · where the garment carries the professional-care symbol |
| Tumble drying | Heat exposure per the declared symbol · no curl, no delamination |
| Edge integrity | Ultrasonic seal held · no fray or filament release after cycling |
| Skin contact | Softness and hand assessed on neck-position labels before approval |
| Code legibility | Printed data carriers scan-verified after wash cycling |
Test reports are issued against the job number and retained. Where a brand nominates its own laboratory, we submit to theirs and accept their result as final.
Precedent
Twenty-two languages, one pass
In the 1990s a buyer needed a care label set in twenty-two languages for a single style shipping across Europe and Asia. The machine capable of it was in Macau. Tur went to see it, understood it, and brought the capability back to Lahore.
That job is the reason this press exists, and the reason a brand can still send us a single artwork with a two-dozen-market language matrix and receive one label rather than twenty-two.
Next
The label is one component of eighteen
A garment leaves the mill wearing hangtags, price tickets, size strips, waistbands, flashers, polybag labels and a carton. All of them are printed here, to the same colour standard, so the black on the tag matches the black on the box.
Begin
Send us the specification
A physical label, a language matrix, a fibre breakdown, or the markets the style is shipping to. We will come back with the format, the compliance gaps and the price.