Mounds' minis make the most of visuals

Award: Gold for Printing Achievement

Winner: Mounds Island confectionery bag (Hershey’s)

Exceptional printing and graphic designs really make the glitzy 11.1-ounce bag for Hershey's Mounds Island Orange Dark Chocolate candies sparkle. A line extension of the famous Mounds candy bar line, the Mounds Island Orange Miniatures faces an extremely competitive confectionery market, so the eye-popping orange, brown and white color scheme and lively design had to boost shelf appeal and point-of-purchase impact.

Converted by American Packaging (www.ampkcorp.com), a Gold winner in Printing Achievement, the bagstock is made of an oriented PP that's adhesive-laminated in-line to a clear, linear low-density PE substrate that provides a glossy finish. More good looks come from digital flexographic printing plates that achieve a quality graphics design that Hershey desired. At its flexo-printing and laminating division, American Packaging uses a Windmoeller & Hoelscher (www.whcorp.com) Stella Flex press and a combination of DuPont (www.dupont.com) FAST digital photopolymer plates and high-strength, solvent-based inks in seven colors to create the striking package and graphics design for the limited-edition product.

OEC Graphics (www.oecgraphics.com) supplied the prepress plates, which boost image sharpness, color brightness and high-color density. A clear-film window left unprinted provides visibility to the wrapped candy pieces inside the bag.

American Packaging points out that the design incorporates a significant number of combination process plates that can present challenges in achieving color density while consistently printing with clean screens. But the results for Mounds represent a process improvement and a new printing approach that American Packaging says reduces presstime and makeready costs.

"By using DuPont digital FAST plates, we were able to also offer smaller and more stable highlight dots," says American Packaging. "The plate technology successfully converted the product line from gravure-printed designs to less-expensive flexographically printed packaging without compromising the brand image or the quality of graphic reproduction."