Lithographic offset
The ten-thousandth sheet
is the one that counts
Any floor can match the proof on sheet one. Eight sheet-fed presses, a measured colour standard and a control strip read every twenty minutes are what hold that match to the end of the run — and to the repeat order eleven months later.
The process
Offset does not print. It transfers.
Ink never touches the sheet from the plate. It is laid onto a rubber blanket first, and the blanket lays it onto the board. That one indirection is why offset holds a 1% highlight dot on a textured uncoated stock that no direct process can hold, and why a carton printed in January can be matched in November from the same plate curve.
It is also why offset is unforgiving. Water, ink, blanket, pressure and stock are five variables in continuous negotiation. The trade is not in owning presses. It is in knowing what each one does when the humidity in Lahore moves fourteen points before noon.
Everyone on this floor can read a control strip. Two of them have been reading ours since the 1990s.
The floor
Eight presses, bought to solve eight different problems
Nothing here was bought as an upgrade. Each press entered the building because a specific job could not be made properly on the ones already here.
| Press | Configuration · format · what it is for |
|---|---|
| Heidelberg Speedmaster CD 102 | 5-colour + coater · 720 × 1,020 mm · long-run folding carton, shelf-ready retail, heavy board to 450 gsm |
| Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 102 | 4-colour · 720 × 1,020 mm · process-colour cartons, litho-laminate face sheets |
| Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 74 | 5-colour + coater · 520 × 740 mm · hangtags, inserts, pharmaceutical cartons, brand-colour work |
| Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 74 | 4-colour · 520 × 740 mm · mid-run cartons and leaflets |
| Heidelberg SORMZ | 2-colour · 520 × 720 mm · spot-colour leaflets, reverse printing, second-pass work |
| Heidelberg GTO 52 | 2-colour · 360 × 520 mm · short-run proofs, swing tickets, numbered and specialty stocks |
| Heidelberg Suprasetter CTP | 2,400 dpi thermal · 1–99% at 200 lpi · plates imaged in-house, plate curves held per press |
| Colour room | Spectrophotometer, D50 viewing booth to ISO 3664, ink kitchen with Pantone base dispensing |
Press configuration on the floor changes as machines are commissioned and retired. The current signed equipment schedule is issued with every formal quotation and is available for audit before contract.
Read the margin
What the operator is actually looking at
Every sheet we run carries a control strip in the trim margin — the part that gets cut off and thrown away. It is the only honest record of how the sheet ran. Select a patch to see what it tells the press operator, and what happens when it moves.
Control strip · gripper edge · trimmed before dispatch
Registration mark
Four plates, one crosshair. If cyan sits 0.1 mm off the black, the mark thickens before any human eye can see it in the image. It is the first thing read and the first thing corrected.
TOLERANCE — ALL FOUR PLATES WITHIN 0.1 MM, SHEET TO SHEET
Illustrative strip. The live strip carries the patch set required by the job — food-grade, pharmaceutical and licensed-brand work each specify their own.
Colour
Colour is a measurement before it is an opinion
A buyer in Amsterdam and a press operator in Lahore cannot argue about a colour they have both measured. So we take the argument out of it. Brand colours are specified as Lab values, not as a printed sample that has already faded in the courier bag.
Plate curves are held per press, per stock and per screen ruling, so the same file produces the same dot on the CD 102 and the SM 74 without anyone adjusting the artwork. Nothing is corrected at the ink duct that should have been corrected at the plate.
| Control | Standard held |
|---|---|
| Process aim | ISO 12647-2 · paper type matched to stock |
| Brand colour | ΔE00 ≤ 2.0 to signed target; ≤ 1.5 on repeat |
| Screen ruling | 150–200 lpi AM · hybrid screening on request |
| Tone value increase | Held to curve at 40 / 50 / 75% |
| Grey balance | Read as a triplet, not three separate densities |
| Viewing | D50, ISO 3664 booth · never under the shed lights |
| Frequency | Strip read at make-ready, then on interval through the run |
| Record | Readings filed against the job number, retained for repeat |
Substrate & ink
The stock decides more than the press does
Half of what buyers call a printing problem is a stock problem — a board that cracks at the crease, a coating that will not hold foil, a recycled grade whose shade moves between mill batches. We choose against the finished job, not the sample book.
Cartonboard
SBS/GC1 and GC2 for face-critical retail, FBB for stiffness at lower grammage, CCNB and kraft-back where the economics decide. 200 to 450 gsm through the presses.
Paper & Text
Coated and uncoated 60 to 170 gsm for leaflets, inserts, wraps and litho-laminate face sheets. Bible and onion grades for pharmaceutical inserts.
Specialty Stocks
Textured and laid papers, black-dyed board, metallised board, natural kraft. Every one of them changes how ink, foil and emboss behave — draw-downs before commitment.
Low-Migration Systems
Low-migration ink sets for food-contact and pharmaceutical work, specified against the EuPIA exclusion policy and the customer's own restricted-substance list.
Coatings In-Line
Aqueous gloss, matte and matt-and-gloss drip-off from the coater unit. Barrier and rub-resistant coatings where the pack has to survive a transit it was not designed for.
Chain of Custody
FSC®-certified board available on request across the carton grades, ordered against the job so the claim on the pack matches the invoice behind it.
Make-ready
Where the money is actually lost
Nobody loses money at run speed. It is lost in the forty minutes before the run speed, and in the sheets thrown away getting there.
The common practice
Plates imaged without a press curve. Colour chased at the ink duct. Make-ready waste absorbed into the quoted price and never counted. A repeat order treated as a new job, because nobody recorded what the first one was actually run at.
How this floor runs
Curve applied at plate. Ink keys pre-set from the file before the first sheet pulls. Make-ready waste counted per job and reported against target. Every run's readings, stock lot and plate set filed under the job number — so the repeat starts where the first one finished, not where it started.
Waste sheets are baled, weighed and returned to the mill stream. The tonnage is reported annually and it is one of the numbers we are least comfortable with — which is the reason it gets reported.
Honest limits
When offset is the wrong answer
Below roughly two thousand sheets, plate and make-ready cost dominates and you are paying for a process you are not using. Roll-form self-adhesive labels belong on the flexo line. Care labels belong on the rotary letterpress, because satin and taffeta do not take lithographic ink. Variable data — serialisation, sequential numbering, per-unit codes — is a flexo or digital job with an offset-printed shell if the graphics demand it.
We will tell you this at quotation stage rather than after. It costs us the job occasionally. It has never cost us the account.
Next
A printed sheet is not a package yet
Everything printed here goes on to be cut, creased, folded, glued and finished inside the same building. Nothing is sent out, which is why nothing gets lost.
Begin
Send us the specification
A die-line, a sample, a photograph of something you want matched — or just the brief. We will tell you what it takes to make, what it will cost, and when it can ship.