Custom Food Trays

Custom Food Paper: Sustainable And Affordable Packaging Choice!

Your packaging is the first impression and the primary salesman of your brand. In the year 2026, the role of packaging is more pronounced than it was before. We can see that the global packaging market was valued at $48.17 billion in 2025, and it is projected to surge to $81.04 billion by 2034. The food and beverage segment dominates with a 32.67% share in 2026 and is the single largest category on earth. Despite the fact that the packaging in the food sector holds a lot of importance, there are so many businesses that are leaving money on the table and settling for generic packaging. But we will never recommend this to you, and we would highly recommend the use of custom food trays. These trays are printed with the logos of your company and are highly pleasing to customers who prefer sustainable packaging. 

No matter how much quality food you are serving, if your packaging is not catchy, you can rarely impact customers’ perception of your brand. Certainly, luxury hotels would prefer to serve the food in luxury cutlery. But as a fast food brand or as a new bee in the food sector, you can compete with luxury brands with a mere investment in printed food trays. So let’s read and understand how Greaseproof Paper’s food trays can impact the growth of your business. 

What Are Custom Food Trays?

Custom food Tray wholesale is specifically designed packaging that is manufactured with paper and designed to hold and protect edibles. Unlike generic packaging, they are manufactured to exact dimensional specifications and printed with your brand graphics. Not only this, but food-grade barrier coatings are also added to these paper trays, which make them grease and moisture-resistant. At our company, we give diet-cut and scoured calibrated trays that are manufactured with solid bleached sulphate paperboard. Some of the additional features that can be added to these trays are: 

• Compartments
• Handles
• Locking tabs
• Windows 

For food businesses, these trays are not only packaging. They are the brand’s first touch point and food safety mechanisms. When a brand invests in customization of its food packaging, it gets a chance to take the lead in its product presentation. A generic packaging can never allow you to communicate your brand values with the customers, and indirectly cause you to lose. 

Materials That Show Your Brand’s Precision

Every decision a brand makes regarding the packaging starts with the selection of material. This is because material is not just about aesthetics; it is about food safety and brand liability. That is why we use one of the finest quality packaging materials to manufacture the trays. Some of the material options for personalized food trays are as follows: 

Solid Bleached Sulfate Paperboard  

SBS paperboard is a high-quality white paperboard made from bleached virgin wood pulp. It has a smooth, uniform surface that is ideal for high-end printing and food-grade packaging. Unlike recycled paperboard, SBS is free of contaminants and offers excellent visual appeal, strength, and cleanliness, making it suitable for direct food contact.

This material is the gold standard and is one of the highest quality packaging papers used to manufacture food boats and trays. Solid bleach sulphate is made with bleached virgin wood pulp and has a smooth surface. The uniform surface is ideal for high-end printing and elegant product presentation. Unlike recycled paper, SBS is free from contamination and offers excellent visual appeal. It has cellulose fibers that are bleached using element chlorine free bleaching agents. These agents remove lignin and eliminate the yellow-brown color of the pulp. 

Its removal creates a pure cellulose matrix with tightly bonded hydrogen inter-chain networks between hydroxyl groups on adjacent glucose units. This molecular structure increases the tensile strength and dimensional stability of custom paper food trays. The best thing about this process is that it eliminates all the odor and residues from the wood pulp and leads to zero off-taste migration into the food. 

Folding Boxboard 

FBB is a multilayer material that has excellent mechanical strength. It has a refined pulp centre that is sandwiched between the bleached outer plies of the paper. The mechanical pulp or ground wood centers give stiffness at a lower grammage to the paper. This means that you can achieve more rigidity with fewer grams of material. A folding board is one of the excellent choices of custom food tray packaging for businesses that need lightweight packaging without compromising quality. 

The lignin fibers are present in the centre ply and do not come in contact with the food. This leads to high structural rigidity due to the cross-linked aromatic phenylpropane polymer network of lignin. The bleached outer plies maintain food safety compliance and printability that lead to refined and highly professional-looking trays. 

Kraft Paperboard  

Kraft is one of the purest forms of paper fiber that is manufactured with virgin wood pulp. The main origin of kraft paper is southern pine softwood that is clay-coated at the top. The long and large pine fibers give excellent strength and tear resistance to the paper. Due to the krafting process, this paper is highly resistant to tearing and gives food trays that can be used without any worry of spilling. In this process, fibers with a higher degree of polymerisation are achieved that can carry significant product weight. This level of durability made the paper trays an excellent choice for fried food services or multi-compartment meal trays. 

Grammage Selection  

No matter which type of paper you are selecting, one of the most important things is the selection of grammar. It is not just a specification but a variable that determines whether the tray survives a full commercial shift without structural failure. Some of the common GSMs that are used for food trays are as follows: 

• Food tray paperboard typically ranges from 230 g/m² to 450 g/m²
• Lightweight snack trays can perform at 230 to 280 g/m²
• Catering-grade meal trays require 350 to 450 g/m² for stacking integrity

If you select the wrong GSM, it means you have compromised the presentation. This can lead to food returns or a poor impression on the customers. Brands that have no idea about GSM selection can book a free consultation with us and get the best option for their packaging. 

Printed Food Trays For Designs And Color Of Your Choice 

As a food business, you need to get high-quality prints on food trays; the design of your trays is the first thing that a customer will notice. If your trays have a washed-out logo or an off-hue color, then the customer will consider it a low-quality brand. Select a color and design of the artwork that will give you a packaging that sells and not just a packaging that sits. 

Color Selection 

We want you to know the requirements of your packaging trays so that you can choose the best option. In the following table, you will see a comparison between CMYK and PMS. You will be able to identify which is the best option based on your brand theme and color requirement:

The Hybrid Approach

The best thing is the selection of a hybrid approach for custom printed food tray that is done by many professional food packaging manufacturers, like Greaseproof Papers. You can select CMYK for complex images and PMS when you need the exact colors, such as on logos and brand names. This is a hybrid approach that will give photographic artwork and guarantee a consistent brand color. A hybrid approach will result in a packaging that will help customers identify your brand through an artistic design and precise colors of your brand. We are not mentioning these things to make you drench in complex technical information, but to ensure that you thoroughly understand what is suitable for you. This will help you make a decision that is not only influenced by the packaging manufacturer but also by your own expertise. 

Flexographic Printing for Food Trays

This is the best printing process that is used in the manufacturing of flexible food packaging, such as custom logo food trays and food paper. Flexography uses photoprinting polymer plates that give high-speed designs with precision. This printing method gives sharp designs with fast drying via UV-curing or water-based ink systems.

Water-Based vs. UV-Curable Inks

Another thing that we want our customers to know is the selection of inks. We have Twinkks options: water-based inks and UV inks. You can use water-based inks due to their food-grade nature and their compatible recycling ability. UV inks are used when a fast turnaround is required, as the ink dries immediately. These inks have high gloss and scratch resistance, which makes them one of the premium choices for food-grade prints on luxury food trays. 

Add Value With Coatings And Add-Ons

Add-ons and coatings are not just a decoration. They are functional elements that solve real operational and commercial problems. Add-ons help in giving a catchy look to the trays, and coatings are essential for the functionality of the trays. The right coating preserves and protects the material of trays and keeps them intact during the supply chain. 

The above-mentioned add-ons and coatings are among a few options that we have for our customers. You can select several other options by consulting with our packaging engineers. We give brands options considering their requirements. Say, the coating for parchment paper will be different from the coatings for trays, wax papers, and so on. 

Quick-Service Restaurants and Fast Food  

Fast Food Quick-Service Restaurants are under pressure to serve and deliver food at serving temperature with no structural failure during peak-hour service volume. Custom paper food trays are designed with PE or PFAS-free coating that has cored fold lines to assemble in one hand. A tray collapsing because of the weight of the sauce is not a packaging failure, but rather a brand failure before a customer.

Bakery and Confectionery 

Bakery trays need non-grease absorbent surfaces, which are clean and have the ability to support the weight of the product’s moisture. SBS-based trays with aqueous barrier or PLA coatings are the best choice. Complete CMYK printing on tray exterior, with PMS spot colour to ensure brand accuracy, enables both the artisan bakeries and the mass-market bakers to produce branded packaging. Such packaging serves both as a product protector and a professional display in the retail outlet.

Food Delivery and Meal Kits  

The boom of food delivery and meal kit services requires trays to operate over a cold-chain-ambient range of 30-90 minutes. Delivery application custom trays must have moisture-lock barrier finishes, compartmentalisation to avoid cross-contamination of flavours, and structural stacking strength to facilitate multi-tray delivery systems. An efficiently designed paper food tray may not need a second layer of plastic wrapping. This will lead to a cost reduction of packaging material and a waste reduction.

Catering and Events 

Catering operators need trays of non-standard size, such as individual chafing dish format, buffet, or portion. Such trays must have a rigid structure. So, when fully loaded with products, they can retain their shape during a service duration of 2-4 hours. Die-cutting to exact dimensions allows trays to fit the standard catering equipment. Embossed logos or hot foil branding items enable high-end caterers to provide a high-end display that conveys their level of service.

Retail Meat, Deli, and Produce 

Retail food trays used in refrigerated meat, deli, and produce applications need both moisture-wicking and moisture-barrier characteristics. The tray should be able to absorb condensation on the surface of the product but not allow it to be absorbed through to the exterior. This is achieved by multi-layer paperboard structures having an absorbent inner ply and PE or aqueous barrier outer ply. Food contact compliance (FDA 21 CFR, EU Regulation 1935/2004) is compulsory, and SBS-based trays produced with no recycling meet these kinds of compliance without an extra burden of tests.

Frozen Food and Ready Meals 

For frozen food manufacturers and ready-meal producers, the tray should be able to withstand thermal shock. This means the change between temperatures of -18C to oven temperatures of 180-200C delaminated or damaged seals. PET-coated paperboard trays give excellent performance up to 400 F in conventional ovens, and can withstand 60 minutes at full product load. To the businesses in this industry, the replacement of aluminium foil containers with printed paper ovenable trays provides both a sustainability factor and a branding opportunity. 

Book Your Order!

Brands that are ready to invest in quality custom food trays can contact Greaseproof Papers. Whether you need a grease-barrier fried food tray or an ovenable frozen meal solution, we have got you covered. Our company manufactures paper food trays with the exact specifications of your brand, so you can get maximum benefit out of it. Contact us today for a free consultation!