A brand owner planning a tea range recently asked whether each of the twenty bags in a box could carry a different short text on its tag — a quote, a line, a small message the drinker finds on the string. It is a good idea and a common one. It is also, before anything else, a printing question, and the answer depends on how tags reach a tea bag line in the first place.
Where the tag comes from
On a string-and-tag line the tag is not made on the machine. It arrives as a printed reel — a continuous strip of tags, already printed and die-cut to shape — and the line attaches each tag to the string as the bag is formed. The tea, the filter paper and the string are one set of inputs; the tag reel is another, produced by a print supplier to the brand's artwork.
That is why "different texts on every tag" is a question for the reel, not for the tea. The bag does not know what is printed on the tag it carries. What has to be decided is how twenty designs are arranged on the reels that feed the line.
Sequence on one reel, or separate reels
There are two ways to do it.
The first is to print the twenty designs in sequence on a single reel. The line runs continuously and the tags come off in the printed order — design one, design two, and so on — which is what a mixed box wants. The second is to print each design as its own reel and change reels between runs, which is the normal way to produce several single-design SKUs and the wrong way to fill one mixed box.
Which is available for a given quantity, and what each costs, depends on the tag print supplier's process and the run size. That is the part we confirm with the supplier before we quote, because it decides both the price of the tags and the lead time of the print job.
What a mixed box actually contains
One practical point is worth settling before artwork begins. With a sequence-printed reel the line runs on, and a box of twenty bags receives the next twenty tags on the reel. Over the run every design appears with equal frequency, but a given box is not guaranteed to hold exactly one of each in a fixed order — the sequence simply continues from box to box.
For most concepts that is fine: the drinker gets variety, and the set is discovered over several boxes. If the concept genuinely requires one of each design per box in a set order, it has to be said at the planning stage, because it changes how the run is organised and it is not something to discover after the reels are printed.
The artwork side
Twenty designs means twenty artwork files, and each is a full print item. All of them sit on the same dieline — the tag's exact shape and size — with the same bleed and the same safe area, so that no text runs to the edge or into the fold where the string is attached. The texts are proofread in their final language before the files go to print, because a typo on tag seven is repeated on every seventh tag in the run.
Our packaging artwork guide covers file preparation in general; the multi-design case adds only discipline: one dieline, twenty files checked against it, and a written note on whether order or one-of-each matters.
Where we sit
The bag, the string and the attachment are our side: our single-chamber string-and-tag line in Sındırgı envelopes each bag in line, and it does not care how many designs the reel carries. The envelope and the retail carton are separate print items and can stay single-design while the tags vary.
We treat a multi-design request as a print specification from the first conversation — number of designs, whether order matters, tag dimensions, artwork checklist — and confirm with the print supplier how the designs will be reeled for your quantity before anything is priced. You get a plain answer on feasibility first. Volumes, print set-up and prices are confirmed at quotation.
