Getting Sunrise-ready? 2D Barcodes live or die on press.

For printers, GS1 Sunrise 2027 touches your prepress before it reaches your data team or the brand customer’s marketing department. The 2D barcode has to be printed to a tolerance the old linear barcode never demanded, and that job starts in origination.

Almost every article written about Sunrise 2027 is pitched at brand owners: audit your GTINs, sort your resolver, plan your consumer content. But when one of those codes hits a supermarket self-checkout and the scanner just sits there, blinking and unresponsive, the fault is rarely the data behind the code. It is the code itself, on the substrate, printed to a tolerance the old linear barcode format never required. As the printer, that challenge is yours, not the brand’s.

With new regulations on the horizon, what changes on the pressroom floor?

A refresher of Sunrise 2027

Sunrise 2027 is a GS1 initiative to get every retail point-of-sale system reading 2D codes by the end of 2027, sitting alongside the 1D barcode for a time, rather than replacing it overnight. The two carriers in play are the QR code encoded to GS1 Digital Link and the GS1 DataMatrix. It is industry-led rather than law, the 1D code stays on pack for the time being as the new format is introduced. After all, it is called sunrise, not sunset.

GS1’s pilots now span 48 countries, covering roughly 88% of global GDP. Closer to home, GS1 UK reports that 11% of its members have already implemented 2D codes, with a further third planning to within the year. Tesco has been trialling GS1 QR codes on own-brand lines in the south of England, and through the transition, most packs carry both codes.

2D codes won’t forgive dot gain the way barcodes did

A UPC (Universal Product Code, or standard barcode) encodes twelve digits in a row of bars. A scanner reads the relative width of those bars, which is why the format tolerated a fair bit of gain and a slightly soft impression. You could get away with things when materials stretched or warped.

A GS1 Digital Link QR or a DataMatrix is a different animal. It packs the GTIN plus batch number, expiry, serial and a web address into a grid of tiny square modules, and every one of those modules has to hold its edges. On flexo, running uncoated stock, dot gain can swell modules by 15 to 20%. If adjacent dark modules touch, then merge, the pattern starts to corrupt. Error correction buys back a little damage, but then it runs out, and the read fails.

As a result, dot gain has just stopped being an aesthetic consideration and become pass or fail. We have written about the causes of dot gain on this blog more than once, and it was never the most glamorous subject. Now though, it’s pivotal.

Verification comes with a letter grade

2D codes are graded to ISO/IEC 15415, A down to F. An F grade means a scan failure at the checkout, and major retailers are already tying shelf access to Sunrise readiness, with chargebacks for the codes that miss it.

Proofing by eye won’t catch this. A verifier measures contrast, modulation, fixed-pattern damage and whether the code decodes, on the actual printed job. For printers, that is a service worth owning: image the code, print it on the real substrate at the real line conditions, verify to grade, hand back the report. It is also, bluntly, the line between a reprographics partner and a firm that images plates and hopes.

The scannable code is decided in origination

By the time a plate is cut, most of what determines whether a 2D code scans has already been fixed in prepress. Four variables carry the load: quiet zone, module size, contrast, and placement. Each is an origination decision, and each has a defined tolerance rather than a matter of judgement.

The quiet zone is the clear margin the scanner needs to locate the code. For a QR code powered by GS1 it must be four times the X-dimension on all four sides; for a GS1 DataMatrix it is one X-dimension per side.

Module size, the X-dimension, is the width of a single cell. GS1 sets a permitted range for retail point-of-sale of 0.396mm to 0.990mm, with a target of 0.495mm, and specifies that a 2D code prints at 1.5 times the X-dimension of the equivalent linear barcode to allow for optical effects during image capture. Set the module too fine for the press and dot gain closes the cells.

Contrast is the parameter most often underestimated. A scanner distinguishes cells by the difference in reflectance between dark and light, so dark modules on a light ground remain the safe specification. Reversed and low-contrast codes can be read by some configured scanners, but they narrow the margin for error across the range of devices and lighting a pack will meet in the field. Gloss varnish, foil and tight curvature all reduce that margin further. These are colour and finishing questions, and they sit squarely in the domain of anyone running proper colour management.

Placement completes the set. During the dual-marking period, a QR code intended for POS must sit within 50mm of the centre of the linear barcode, so both fall within the scanner’s field in a single pass. Placement also has to tolerate the drift of a running packing line, which means the specification has to hold not at the ideal position but across the real variation of production.

“But the variable data gets jetted on the packing line, so it’s the coder’s problem”

Batch, expiry and serial are often printed live at pack time by inkjet or laser, and yes, that is a coding-and-marking job that often sits with the packer’s remit.

However, plenty of Sunrise codes are static, GTIN-only Digital Link codes that you image and plate like any other artwork element, no different in principle from the logo. The origination sets up everything the coder then has to hit: the reserved quiet zone, the white knockout the code drops into, the contrast around it, and the position on the pack. Get that wrong at artwork stage and no on-line coder rescues the read, however cleanly it jets.

If you run pharmaceutical work, none of this is a surprise, because regulated healthcare has been printing serialised GS1 DataMatrix at these tolerances for years. Sunrise is really the rest of the retail shelf catching up to a discipline pharma printers already live by, involving tight codes, batch and lot data, real traceability, and an audit trail that has to be robust. The rigour that used to belong to the medicine cabinet is now heading for the cereal aisle.

A lot of moving parts, and not much room for error

Step back and the scale of the coordination becomes very clear. The data structure, the code type, the module size, the quiet zone, the contrast, the substrate, the placement and the verification, all have to line up at once, and most of them are settled before a plate is ever cut. Get any one of them wrong and the failure does not show up on the proof, but at the checkout, on live stock. At the least convenient moment.

That is a lot to hold in balance while also running everything else demanded of today’s printers. It is the reason a prepress partner earns its place here rather than adding a step. Creation images these codes at the resolution and dot-gain control they demand, reserves and protects the quiet zone at artwork stage, sets the contrast and colour so the code holds across substrates, and verifies the printed result to ISO/IEC 15415 before it reaches a run.

If a 2D code is heading for one of your jobs, the useful moment to involve us is early, while the code can still be shaped rather than salvaged. That is the conversation worth starting now.

If you’re looking to get your operations Sunrise-ready, speak to our expert team today.