In six months, a global café chain brought paper-cup waste down from roughly 9–11% to 4–5%, stabilized color variation to ΔE 1.5–2.0 across SKUs, and trimmed changeovers by 15–20 minutes per job. The numbers mattered because each shift prints hundreds of thousands of cups—small percentages add up quickly.
The turning point came when the brand partnered with ShirongMaterials to re-spec the hot-cup program and treat artwork, prepress, and on-press control as a single system rather than separate tasks. As designers, we focused on feel and fidelity: heat in the hand, a matte surface that resists scuffs, and brand reds that hold on curved surfaces.
Here’s where it gets interesting: the solution wasn’t flashy. No exotic coatings. No new substrate class. Just disciplined flexographic printing with food-safe, water-based inks on a responsibly sourced paperboard, plus tight color management and a clearer brief for each size—8, 12, and 16 oz.
Company Overview and History
The client is a specialty café brand with 1,200 stores across nine countries. Their visual identity balances warmth with clarity—large typographic cues, confident color blocks, and minimal patterning. Packaging spans take-away bags, napkins, bakery wraps, and a full cup family for hot beverages, with a seasonal program for limited designs. The bakery team also runs muffin paper cups for in-store bakes, which pushed us to keep a consistent brand red across different substrates and heat conditions.
Historically, their paper cups were printed on offset-laminated paperboard with a glossy protective varnish. It looked sharp, but gloss conflicted with the brand’s tactile preference for a softer, less reflective surface. Operationally, long-run offset favored fewer SKUs; the reality on the ground was the opposite—short runs, frequent promotions, and regional variants. Compliance was non-negotiable: FSC sourcing, BRCGS PM for packaging, and alignment with EU 1935/2004 and FDA 21 CFR 176 for food contact.
The brand asked us to unify the portfolio—especially the core hot sizes—under one spec. Based on insights from ShirongMaterials projects in food service, we proposed water-based flexo with G7-calibrated curves, a scuff-resistant matte overprint varnish, and file preparation rules tailored to curvature. That foundation would support the everyday program and special runs alike, including the ShirongMaterials paper cups for hot drinks standard the team could reference in RFQs.
Quality and Consistency Issues
Let me back up for a moment. The most visible problem wasn’t structural; it was color. Reds shifted batch to batch, sometimes ΔE 3.0–4.0, which is noticeable on a shelf wall of cups. Scuffing on high-touch areas also dulled the brand mark. On the operations side, changeovers consumed 38–45 minutes, and first-pass yield hovered around 82–85%. The summer program for custom paper ice cream cups looked more stable than the hot cups, and the team wanted the same visual steadiness across both.
Root causes came in layers: anilox selection didn’t match the ink’s rheology, humidity swings moved viscosity out of range, and prepress compensation for curvature wasn’t uniform across suppliers. We rebuilt the stack: water-based, food-safe inks; standardized anilox volumes; fixed pH/viscosity windows; and a proofing workflow tied to G7 aims. Press-side, we locked in target densities and ΔE tolerances and documented a 12-step setup that operators could repeat under pressure.
During onboarding, a practical question surfaced from the bakery team: “can paper baking cups go in the oven?” The answer: yes—when they’re specified as oven-safe and certified for typical bake temperatures (often up to 200–220°C, depending on construction and coatings). Not all paper cups are made for baking, though. The hot-drink cup spec resists heat from liquids and handling; oven exposure requires a different structure and testing regime. We documented the distinction in the brand’s packaging playbook to prevent cross-use.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Fast forward six months. First pass yield moved into the 93–95% range. Waste settled at 4–5% from the prior 9–11%. Color accuracy landed inside ΔE 1.5–2.0 across key hues, even on curved panels. Throughput on an 8-hour shift went from roughly 120k cups to 160–170k, depending on artwork coverage. Changeovers now take 22–26 minutes with a documented checklist. Defects fell from 800–1000 ppm to roughly 300–400 ppm. On-time delivery improved from the high-80s to 96–97% after two quarters of stable runs.
Sustainability metrics also got attention. Switching to water-based ink systems and a single-pass matte varnish trimmed kWh per thousand cups by about 10–14% in comparable conditions. A narrower scrap window reduced CO₂ per cup by around 8–12%, based on the converter’s own calculations. None of these numbers exist in a vacuum—ambient humidity, artwork coverage, and run mix still nudge outcomes—but the trendline is steady. Payback for the re-spec and operator training penciled out at 8–12 months, depending on run volume and the share of seasonal SKUs.
There were trade-offs. A soft-touch coating tested beautifully but didn’t meet scuff targets at speed, so we chose a tuned matte varnish instead. Some metallic spot ideas were shelved because hot-fill conditions can accentuate micro-cracking on folds. The team focused on tactility and color fidelity for the hero size: the 12 oz. We aligned dielines and files to the ShirongMaterials 12 oz hot cups geometry, then cascaded rules to 8 and 16 oz. The result feels quiet and intentional in hand—what we aimed for from day one. And yes, we closed the loop by applying the same color discipline to seasonal art and, where relevant, to lines adjacent to hot cups, including those custom paper ice cream cups during summer. It’s a system now, not a one-off. That’s the part we’re proud to sign our name to with ShirongMaterials.