Coaster Articles About buying custom drink coasters

What you need to know when buying Drink coasters:

If you are not completely familiar with purchasing custom paper coasters or more correctly custom pulpboard drink coasters then read on and I'll explain the most important aspects.

First: We manufacture Custom Pulpboard drink coasters.  These are often referred to as paper coasters, bar coasters or beer coasters.  We manufacture them from a material known as Pulpboard also known as coaster board or beer mat. In the coaster industry there are 3 main thicknesses of the coaster board to choose from. A lightweight coaster is approximately 1 mm (40 points) thick.  A mediumweight coaster is approximately 1.4mm (60 points) thick.  And a heavyweight coaster is approximately 2.00 mm (80 points) thick.  A note of caution - coaster board is designed specifically for the manufacturing of drink coasters.  It often happens that other paper products are sometimes substituted for coasterboard. These products are easy to spot as they tend to fall apart very quickly when any moisture is introduced or they are laminated and coated leaving them with no absorbency at all.  There are very few true coaster manufacturers so be careful when picking your supplier of custom drink coasters.

There are many things to consider when deciding on the thickness of coaster board for your promotional drink coasters. What will they be used for, where will they be used and how long do you need them to last must be considered.

Basically the thicker your coasters, the more moisture they will absorb and the longer they will last.  Of course the thicker coaster are a little more expensive and you must decide if the added cost makes sense.  The most common coaster thickness that is ordered is the lightweight coaster board.

Shape of your custom drink coasters: Standard beer coaster shapes are square or circle coasters.  

Size of your custom drink coasters: The standard sizes in North America for beer coasters are 3.5 inch and 4 inch.  By far the most common size ordered from us are the 4 inch size.

Custom drink coaster sizes and Shapes: We can manufactere almost any size or shape beer coaster for your truly custom promotion.  In order to do this we need to finalize your artwork and then create a custom die to cut them out after they have been printed.  Of course there is a one time die cost for this on top of the regular production costs.  Email us and we will be happy to help you with your next custom shaped beer coasters.

Quantity: You need to decide on the quantity of drink coasters you will need.  As a rule of thumb, the larger the beer coaster order the lower the cost per drink coaster.  We consider orders under 50 000 coasters to be relatively smaller orders and we have devised our Value Pack Coaster pricing for this.  Please see the pricing tab for more details.  The value pack coasters offer set pricing for standardized quantities and are the best value when ordering smaller beer coaster quantites.  Value pack coasters are run full color process on both sides and all set up fees are included.

Custom Coaster Runs: It is best to email us for a quote when ordering large beer coaster runs, custom shaped coasters or custom color coasters. 

Colors - Our coasters are manufactured using the most modern offset printing technology allowing for the best reproduction of images. The majority of our beer coaster orders are printed using 4 color process.  We do also offer PMS or spot color printing as well.   4 color process is the process of mixing Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black to reproduce most colors.  There are however some colors that can not be reproduced using 4 color process such as metallic colours like gold or silver.  For special colors we need to use PMS or spot colors.

Packing your beer coasters: Our standard packaging for your drink coasters is shrinkwrapping and bulk packing into boxes.

Custom packaging your beer coasters: We have the ability to collate numerous versions into small packs and shrinkwrap.  We can accommodate custom sized boxes as well. 

Shipping your coasters: We have numerous carriers for large and small coaster shipments and are happy to ship using them.  However, if you have a preferred courier we will be happy to ship on your account with your carrier.