Foil labels incorporate metallic foil finishes. The metallic finish enhances a label’s image and makes a label “eye-catching”, thus making a product more noticeable in a retail setting. Common foil label applications would include cosmetics, shampoos & conditioners as well as sports drinks and supplements.

Foil finishes are applied or created using a few different methods:

Hot stamping is the most common way to create a foil finish. Typically, a metal die is heated and applied to an offsetting foil film that transfers the heated image area to the paper substrate creating a foiled business card, brochure or similar product.

Cold Foil is typically used in the label making arena to create foil finishes on substrates that don’t react well to heat. For instance, you cannot apply heat to a shrink sleeve label without destroying a label’s integrity. With cold foil an adhesive is “printed” and a roll of foil is applied to the “adhesive image” and the foil adheres to the image area only. Recently this technology has expanded into the flexible packaging industry and the commercial printing market. Aqua Foil is a trade name developed by one of the large print aggregators and relates to this cold foil application.

Metallized films are used to create fake hot or cold foil images. A silver metalized paper, board or Polyester film is printed with process colored translucent inks to create foil tints. Using 4-color process printing onto a foil base you can create the illusion of colored foil. In areas that don’t need any foil, the print area is deadened using white inks to make the print area appear like tradition 4 color process print. This process is very common in the digital printed label industry and prime label arena, as well as the SBS box board industry.