Export packaging & labelling

What export work usually involves

• Printed cartons, sleeves and retail packaging for the destination market
• Product labels carrying two or more languages
• Inserts, leaflets and instruction sheets
• Printed outers and shipping marks
• Matching sets across a product range, produced to one specification

The language on the pack

We typeset and proofread Arabic, Sinhala and Tamil here, alongside English. That is a different thing from being able to print them. Most printers will place a script you supply and produce it faithfully, including any error it already contains, because nobody in the building reads it. On an export run that error is not caught at proof stage — it is caught by the importer, after the stock has shipped.

So send wording as text rather than as a picture of text. Text can be re-broken across lines, corrected, spaced properly for its script and checked by someone who reads it. An image can only be placed.

Arabic changes the layout, not just the words

Arabic reads right to left, so it does not drop into the space the English occupied. The alignment reverses, the order in which panels are read reverses with it, and what was the front of a carton may not be the front any more. On a folding carton that is a dieline decision, which is why it belongs in the first conversation rather than in artwork.

The script itself also behaves differently. Arabic letters join, so it cannot be letter-spaced to fill a line the way Latin type can — tracking it apart breaks the joins and the word stops reading. Line spacing has to allow for marks that sit above and below the baseline. Type that has been scaled down to fit a panel loses those marks first, which is how a label ends up technically present and practically unreadable.

What the destination market requires

What has to appear on the pack — declarations, weights, origin, importer details, language requirements — comes from your importer or agent. It varies by market and by product category, and it is not something we can determine for you. Send us the list and we make sure every item on it is placed legibly, in the right language, and clear of creases, cuts and glue areas.

Send it with the first enquiry rather than once the design is approved. Mandatory copy has a way of arriving late and needing space that the layout no longer has.

The journey is part of the specification

A carton is specified for the worst conditions it will meet, and for export that is rarely the shop. A sea container crossing the equator gets hot and holds moisture, and cartons stacked deep inside it for several weeks take up that moisture and lose stiffness — a box that was rigid when it was packed in Colombo can arrive bowed under the weight of the ones above it.

Lamination slows moisture reaching the board and stops the print scuffing where cartons rub in transit. Board weight and lining do more than lamination does. Both decisions need the same information: how far the shipment travels, how it is stacked, and how long it sits before it is opened.

Keeping a repeat shipment identical

Export packaging is almost always reordered, and the second shipment has to match the first — the importer has approved artwork, and a brand colour that drifts is a conversation nobody wants to have across a time zone. The specification is written down and printed to again, and the cutting forme made for the structure stays with the job, so a reorder runs against the same one rather than a newly made copy.

What to include in your enquiry

• The product, and the market or markets it ships to
• Which languages the pack has to carry, and which one leads
• The list of mandatory information from your importer or agent
• Internal dimensions, or the product the carton has to hold
• Quantity, and the repeat order you expect to follow it
• How the shipment travels, and how high the cartons are stacked
• Whether labels, inserts or literature are produced at the same time

Request an export packaging quotation