This box is structurally one of the first of its kind in the cannabis market. In the smoking industry at large, a “bulk pack” isn’t uncommon, especially with nicotin products like cigarettes. Unfortunately, there hasn’t really been a cannabis equivalent to “bulk” aside from pure flower. The folks at Helena Farms noticed this opportunity to bring a new product to the cannabis market by producing bulk, or “shareable”, packs of pre-rolls of cannabis flower.
Helena Farms was one of the first large scale packaging projects our team at Studio On Fire accomplished with our newest machine – the Sate. Previously the Sate had primarily been used for our in-house child-resistant packaging solution – Craft Lock Box. But, we were excited to explore the wide range of possibilities it could offer, including the incredible tray for the Helena Farms 70-Pack Pre-Roll Box.
The outer sleeve was produced with our other presses. It required a lot of the specialty impression-based printing methods we use – hot foil stamping, embossing, letterpress printing, and more. While the graphics were expertly designed by Courtney Zalewski and Sean Black from Studio Good, our internal structural design team created the unique dieline that was used for all of the components – tray, sleeve, inserts and did the production of them.
Here are the specific breakdowns on the printing processes used: The outer sleeve has a diecut window, has two hot foil passes (one green, one black), and two tonal letterpress passes (two passes being two letterpress inks, and “tonal” meaning they are close to the same tone of the paper they’re being printed onto). It was die cut by our team and fold/glued before being assembled with the tray (also by our team). The two-piece insert was CMYK printed by a local vendor, and we diecut it and assembled it into the tray. The first piece of the insert is the part that’s visible through the diecut window of the sleeve, and is a flap that covers the 70 pre-rolls. The second part of the insert is meant to hold the matches at the base of the box (not visible when the box is closed). The tray didn’t have any printing on it, but was diecut and wrapped (it is a board wrapped in white paper, done by our Sate machine) by our team with the piece of strike paper also manually adhered by our team.
The structure was designed by our team, and was intended to not only fit the 70 pre-rolls, but remain small enough to be held by one hand, include matches inside, and have a piece of match striker paper adhered to the bottom of the tray on the outside. It is an all-in-one experience, and isn’t bulky, is beautifully printed, and is sustainably produced. It brings an entirely new consumer experience to the market, and to do that their team knew they needed excellent design paired with excellent printing.
This piece, as well as our other cannabis packaging, stands out in a competitive market that is overwelmed with packaging that isn’t sustainable, is made overseas (contributing to its climate footprint), and doesn’t use printing methods that highlight its design. That’s why Studio On Fire chooses the printing methods we do – impression based printing. It is time consuming, requires highly skilled press operators, and isn’t cheap, but it pays for itself in the end thanks to it’s unbeatable qualities.
We’re glad Helena Farms came to us for their production, as Studio On Fire is not only a small but mighty USA-based team, we’re also producers of award-winning packaging. We like to think we can really do it all, produce premium work that is award-winning while also keeping it sustainable and USA made. We’re even happier knowing that clients like Helena Farms trust us with their unique, often new, products that need specialty, premium packaging.
Thank you for taking the time to review our submission! Our small but mighty team really appreciates it.
