Custom Printed Food Trays

We specify food-contact compliant boards and inks where the pack touches food directly. Tell us whether contact is direct or through a liner for custom printed food trays, because it changes which stocks are available to you.

A grease-resistant coating or a greaseproof liner. Untreated board will always strike through eventually with hot, oily food — that is a property of the material rather than a quality fault, and it is inexpensive to design out.

On offset and flexo we hold the ink formulation, which gives a tight match run to run. Digital has a wider tolerance. If exact consistency across repeat runs matters more than short-run economics, we will quote the litho route.

That depends on board grade, contents weight and how long the stack stands. Send us the stack height and the weight above the bottom unit and we will specify to it rather than guessing at a grade.

With the right board and coating. Moisture from hot food softens an under-specified tray faster than grease does, so we usually recommend both a heavier caliper and a grease-resistant coating for hot service.

Every run is cut to your dimensions — there are no stock sizes here. Send the product measurements rather than a box size and we will build the food tray around them, then send a dieline template you can design onto.

We issue a dieline template sized to your product, prepress checks your artwork against it, and a proof comes back for sign-off. Nothing runs until you approve that proof, and food trays then take 3 to 5 business days.

Yes. Once a first run is approved we hold the board, structure, dimensions, print method and finishes against your account, so a reorder references the same specification exactly rather than being re-derived. That includes the ink formulation, which is what keeps a brand colour consistent between runs rather than drifting a shade each time.

Recycled grades are available across most of the substrates we run for food trays. Recycled content, kerbside recyclability and certified compostability are three different claims though, so tell us which one you intend to print.

A print-ready PDF or a vector file, with fonts outlined and any raster images at 300 dpi at final size. We supply the dieline to design onto, and prepress checks bleed, safe area and crease clearance before issuing a proof. The dieline we supply carries the crease positions, so keeping type clear of a crease is easier to solve at layout than at proof.

A flat 100 units on any format. Most food trays in this range are quoted from 100 units upward because unit cost falls sharply above that, but the minimum exists so you can validate a structure first.

3 to 5 business days after artwork approval, plus freight. Food tray runs with applied finishes can take longer because each finish is a separate pass, and we confirm a firm date in writing with the quote.