Offset vs Digital Printing: What Works Best for Your Packaging Orders?

Kumar Printers Team
3 days ago
2 min read

At Kumar Printers, we often get customer queries around MOQs and pricing for smaller quantities. Since we exclusively use offset printing at our factory, it is important for us to be able to explain to clients both the advantages and disadvantages of this technology, and how it compares to the most commonly used alternative: digital printing.

To understand the difference, let us explore a basic case study, comparing two packaging orders for folding cartons - one for 10,000 pieces and one for 100,000 pieces and analysing the difference in printing costs between offset and digital printing.

However, before diving in, let us define a few key terms that will help us in our analysis.

Units per sheet (UPS) - This is the number of cartons or boxes that can be printed on a single sheet of board/ paper. If we have a job that is to be printed on 10 UPS, an order for 100,000 units will be printed in (100,000/10) 10,000 sheets. UPS of any job is normally determined by the dimensions of the carton and the sheet size that the printing machine can accommodate.

Machine set up/ make ready - This is the process during which a printing machine (offset or digital) is set up and prepared to print a new job. This process will be repeated for each new job that is loaded on the machine, after the previous job ends. If we print 5 jobs on a machine, we will have to repeat the make-ready process 5 times.
Machine Speed- This is the average speed at which the printing machine can process jobs. In the case of most sheetfed printing machines, this is expressed in terms of sheets per hour (Sheets/hr).