Two Briefs. One Pack. Zero Plastic. 

​

Client: Gurkha and Guns Whisky
Format: Folding Carton
Sector: Alcobev / Premium Spirits
 

The Brief

Gurkha and Guns is a premium whisky brand where packaging is a direct extension of the brand narrative. They came to Kumar Printers with two separate problems that needed to be resolved within the same carton.
 

First, the surface needed to evoke natural oak, referencing the barrels behind the liquid. Not printed wood. Convincing wood.
 

Second, a circular plastic sticker carrying the Gurkha emblem was being manually applied to every carton after printing. It was expensive, inconsistent, added plastic to an otherwise paper-based pack, and slowed the line. They wanted it eliminated and replaced with something that looked better.
 

The Problem

Achieving a credible wood-grain surface through print and coating alone is harder than it appears. The texture needs to suppress reflectivity and create depth, not just print a pattern. The solution also had to keep the carton fully recyclable.

The sticker replacement introduced a separate challenge. The Gurkha emblem is highly detailed, fine linework with tight tolerances between elements. Reproducing it directly on the carton required a custom tool capable of capturing that level of detail while maintaining perfect registration between the embossed relief and the foiled surface, in a single production pass.

Both had to be solved simultaneously in the same workflow, without compromising either.
 

What We Did

For the wood grain surface, we developed a calibrated matte coating that replicates the diffuse light quality of natural oak. No gloss, no obvious print pattern. The surface reads as warm and textured, which is exactly what the brand story needed.
 

The Gurkha emblem was applied using a custom-engineered combined 3D embossing and foiling tool, built specifically around the artwork. By executing both operations in a single pass, we achieved perfect registration between depth and surface finish while eliminating any risk of misalignment between the two processes.
 

The plastic sticker and the manual application operation that went with it, was removed from the process entirely. 

The Outcome

​