Tea Labels
Most tea never sees a bottle. It arrives in a carton about the size of a paperback, in a foil pouch, or in a tin — so tea labelling is a packaging job rather than a bottle job, and the tolerances are tighter than anything else on the drinks shelf. There is very little room on the side of a 25-bag box, and every millimetre of it is already spoken for.
Small panels leave no margin for error
A carton side panel is often under two inches wide and still has to carry the blend name, the ingredient list, steeping instructions, net weight, a barcode and whatever the brand story needs. Two things go wrong at that size. Type set below about 6pt stops being readable once it is printed rather than viewed at 400% on a monitor, and a barcode squeezed into a narrow panel loses its quiet zones and stops scanning. Send us the flat die line before the artwork is finished and we will tell you what will actually fit — that conversation is much cheaper than a reprint.
Pouches, tins and caddies
Every tea format has its own trap:
- Stand-up foil pouches flex, crease and get handled. They need a conformable facestock, and the label has to sit clear of the top heat-seal and the bottom gusset — a label caught under the sealing jaw gets cooked and can compromise the seal itself.
- Tins and caddies have a tight radius. A stiff stock tents at the leading and trailing edge on a small-diameter curve, so we move you onto a thinner, more compliant facestock and an adhesive with enough flow to stay down.
- Loose-leaf jars and sample tins get opened and re-closed constantly. If the label crosses the lid seam, it needs a die line that splits at the seam or it tears on the first open.
- Shipper cartons and shelf-ready cases take a plain paper label — no point paying for synthetic stock on something that gets recycled at the back door.
It is still a food, and it gets brewed
Tea is consumed hot and it picks up whatever is around it, so the label is not just decoration. We spec a low-migration ink set and an adhesive intended for indirect food contact, and we keep printed labels on the outer wrap rather than anywhere near the leaf. If your label goes onto something that ends up in the cup — a bag tag, an infuser sachet, an inner wrap — say so on the quote and we will check the material against that use before anything goes on press, not after.
Iced tea is a different animal
Bottled and canned ready-to-drink tea has nothing in common with a carton. That bottle comes out of a cooler sweating, sits in ice and gets handled wet, so it goes on synthetic waterproof stock — BOPP or polyester — with a high-tack adhesive that keys to cold, damp glass instead of curling at the corner. Same brand, two completely different material specs, and it is worth getting both right.
Blends, batches and seasonal runs
Tea brands rarely run one SKU. There is a core range, a seasonal blend, a limited harvest and three sizes of each, and a printer with a minimum order forces you to buy years of stock for the slow ones. We have no minimums, so each blend gets the quantity it actually sells, and lot codes, harvest years and best-before dates go on in the same pass as variable data.
We also produce…
Popular label formats
Rolls, sheets and die-cut shapes — paper, coated paper, waterproof poly and more.
Need custom tea labels?
Tell us your product, size and quantity — we'll recommend the right material and send free samples.