www.packworld.com ~ Written by Gretchen Edelbrock, Special Projects Editor

Maybe it’s a mid-life crisis, but 37-year-old Snapple is getting a big makeover. Known by some as “The Best Stuff on Earth,” Snapple is getting a flavor renovation AND a packaging and logo update. The tea flavor is being intensified at the same time the sugar is being reduced—lowering the calories by 20% in some cases. The bottle features a sleeker design, and the label heralds the taste improvements. “Real facts”— found under the new silver caps—remain, and will be joined by 256 new facts.

www.brandweek.com

Glass Packaging and Shrink Sleeve Labeling: A Winning Combination

by Mary Ellen Reis

The world of packaging design has undergone a tremendous shift over the last 10 years. With marketing and advertising budgets continuing to be slashed, a product’s packaging has become its primary promotional vehicle. Packaging suppliers have risen to the challenge by introducing packaging technologies that have both revolutionized the look and accommodated the time frame demands of many products in the retail environment.

One packaging design technique receiving considerable attention is shrink sleeve labeling. This kind of labeling has a long history in the packaging industry thanks to its uses for tamper-evident banding and general shrink bundling. More recently, however, the shrink sleeve label has revolutionized the ability of the product container and the label to become more unified by “shrinking” the label into the contours of the container and promoting the full surface of the container. Using different film substrates for different percentages of shrinkage, the shrink sleeve label can accommodate many different sizes of containers and conform to curves that cannot be handled by traditional labeling methods.

Many different technological advances have helped to make shrink sleeve labeling the fastest growing segment of the industry, with an estimated CAGR of 15 to 20 percent. These advances include:

The combination of a shrink sleeve label and a glass container offers both a premium look and a strong barrier for the product. According to Michael Mattia, procurement manager for Canandaigua Wine, “There are just so many advantages to shrink sleeve labeling—the quick turnaround, the ease of monitoring and quality control procedures, and perhaps most importantly, the head-turning look it gives our wine, sparkling wine, and cider products.” Mattia also comments that shrink sleeve labeling gives Canandaigua’s K Cider line just the “different and unique” look needed for crowded retail shelves.

High-Heat, High-Touch

Glass packages and shrink sleeve labels are a winning combination. Durable glass containers, strongly associated with premium presence and product protection, can handle the high temperatures of shrink sleeve labeling’s heat tunnel application process. Glass provides hard and stiff surfaces for the labels to shrink to, increasing the premium “feel” for consumers as they handle the packages.

Retail shelves are full of examples of the benefits of combining glass containers and shrink sleeve labeling. Dean Foods, for example, has successfully reinforced the premium nature of Marie’s Salad Dressing by restaging the product in a new ergonomic glass container with a shrink sleeve label. The labeling creatively shows the color of the product. The use of rotogravure printing demonstrates the value that premium photography adds to a package label. Merchandised in the produce section instead of the salad dressing aisle, Marie’s has won the prestigious 2003 Clear Choice Award from the Glass Packaging Institute.

Another 2003 Clear Choice Award winner, Prego Hearty Meat Sauce, comes in an hourglass-shaped jar designed both for improved grip-ability and for distinctive shelf appeal in the crowded pasta sauce section. The colorful shrink-sleeve label graphics convey rich flavor and fresh ingredients. The successful combination of shrink sleeve labels and ergonomically shaped glass containers like these will continue to be a key benefit for consumer product companies striving to differentiate their products on the shelf.

http://www.packagedesignmag.com  ~ by Debora Toth

As marketers seek to find every available method to draw a consumer’s eye (and wallet) to their product, one of the fastest growing areas is shrink labeling. Take a stroll down any supermarket aisle and look for all of the varying sizes and shapes of product packaging. All of these products, whether they be in plastic or glass containers, are candidates for colorful, eye- catching, shrink labels. For most every size or shape, manufacturers can now put a shrink label on the product in a timely, cost-effective, and consumer-grabbing manner.

One such firm was Welch’s, the world’s leading manufacturer of juice, jam, and jelly products, who wanted to expand sales of its sparkling grape juice cocktail. The company turned to Verst Pack, a Walton, KY, custom and contract packager. Verst Pack worked with Welch’s to create brand new premium markets for their sparkling grape juice cocktail tied to particular holidays and events by adding eye-catching shrink labels on their bottles. Now consumers can easily find the Welch’s product for special holidays, such as New Year’s Eve, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and Fourth of July, where a toast of sparkling grape juice might be used. The Welch’s product has experienced significant growth due to this unique labeling alternative.

In just five years, Verst Pack has become one of the leading full-service custom and contract packaging solution firms in the nation. Verst Pack combines premium-quality shrink labeling, assembly, cartoning, display, and fulfillment experience with the expertise of its parent company, Verst Group Logistics, and utilizes its vast warehouse space, nationwide transportation network, and labor flexibility.

Verst Pack’s establishment and growth are one of its unique aspects. Unlike its competitors, who start out as contract packagers and then seek warehousing and trucking facilities, Verst Pack took the reverse route. The company used its ample warehouse space and logistical expertise to move into custom and contract packaging.

“There were two reasons that we started Verst Pack,” says Paul Verst, president and CEO of the company. “First, we had customers of Verst Group Logistics who were asking for us to get involved in the packaging end. These customers were having us send their products to a third party to be shrink labeled and this became time consuming and costly for them. With our company adding a packaging division, we were able to save our customers money.”

Verst continues, “Secondly, our company was going through strategic planning and looking to diversify. This type of market was a perfect complement to our business and displayed significant growth opportunities for us.”

Verst’s acumen proved correct. The custom and contract packaging industry was in its infancy five years ago with a bright potential. Today, Verst Pack offers single-source capabilities including shrink label, assembly, L-Bar sealing, bundle wrapping, cartooning, multi-packing, display, POP display, and fulfillment on glass and plastic containers including PVC, PET, and HDPE and works with a variety of shrink materials including PVC, PET, PET-G, and OPS. The firm is scheduled to label over one hundred million containers this year. The division has grown from five customers to 50, and less than five of its customers use Verst Pack for cyclical projects–the majority use Verst Pack for monthly projects. Verst estimates that Verst Pack will be posting 30% to 70% annual growth for the next five to ten years.

To enter the business, Verst Group Logistics sought to purchase a small packaging company based in Cincinnati, OH, that held an impressive customer base but limited equipment and space. Within three months of the purchase, Verst had moved the Ohio firm from its 15,000 sq. ft. facility into a new 180,000 sq. ft. building at its Kentucky headquarters with over three million square feet of rack/floor warehouse space and state-of-the-art facility with advanced EDI and WMS (warehouse management system) technology. The facility features 24 dock doors and rail access for fast and timely transportation into the customer’s hands. Its high-tech automated equipment quickly applies shrink labels onto the full or empty containers and bulk palletizes or boxes them in any outbound configuration for shipment all over the country.

Verst Pack’s automated and manual shrink labeling lines can handle multiple projects simultaneously, which translates into unparalleled flexibility and timely packaging solutions for its customers, even with unusual or custom projects.

For example, Brown-Forman approached Verst Pack for the shrink label application of its one-liter Kentucky Derby Mint Julep bottle. The limited-edition square glass bottle uniquely displays the official portrait from the Kentucky Derby. “Not only did the unique shrink-wrap label draw customers to purchase the liquor,” says Jason King, director of sales and marketing for Verst Pack, “but I would estimate that perhaps many of the bottles have never been opened because they are now collector’s items. The shrink-wrap label looked so good that customers saved it.”

But providing an eye-catching yet economical packaging method is not the only card held up its sleeve. Verst Pack prides itself on investing in machines and infrastructure to bring costs down while increasing its speed and efficiency. The firm has spent considerably in installing a radio-frequency integrated system at its facility to track all of its incoming and outgoing pallets and scan the ID on each pallet into their computer system. Specialized robotics work to smoothly move all of the pallets through the facility and automatically band products onto pallets through a completely computerized system. Maintenance personnel diligently watch over the systems and an extensive quality control program is in place.

“Our goal is to make shrink labels the value option for marketers,” says King. “We’ve spent millions of dollars to invest in proprietary designs of shrink labeling systems, but the benefits are worth it.”

Each of Verst Pack’s customer jobs are approached as individual projects with unique configurations. Coca-Cola began to use Verst Pack to set apart its Coca-Cola products for particular groups or geographic regions. The cola manufacturer launched regional promotions for the Final Four basketball tournament in St. Louis this past spring with shrink labels designed especially for the basketball fans. Coca-Cola also uses this type of marketing for other sports teams, such as the football teams of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Ohio State University Buckeyes, and the Florida Gators. The firm even sent some labeled soda bottles to the Cleveland Cavaliers market and the hometown of LeBron James with the young star basketball player’s image on the shrink label.

Market Review: Label Technology by By Noel Jeffrey

Shrink sleeves or shrink-wrap labels, undeniably the hottest among today’s trends, are single layer films printed on either a flexo or rotogravure press, although gravure is the dominant process. Once printed, the labels are unrolled, slit into strips, and formed into a tube with a secured seam, then re-rolled for application machinery. The application line consists of an apparatus to separate the labels, slip each individual label over the entire package, and then send it to a heating unit that shrinks the film onto the bottle or can.

Rick Whipple, vice president of sales and marketing OSIO Labels in Anaheim, Ca., explains the evolution: “Arizona Iced Tea started the bandwagon and others jumped on. Then Nestlé began using sleeves for their Coffeemate non-dairy creamer product and went from an average market share to as high as 60 percent. That’s remarkable and shows the power of that packaging. Customers will continue to get on that band wagon.”

Additional markets that will expand in the coming years:

• Full length sleeves (half sleeves in the future)
• Decorative inks (metallic, thermochromatic, pearlescent)
• More plastic containers
• Innovative container shape (designed specifically for sleeves)
• Markets beyond food & beverage

Indeed, Alcoa is spearheading at least one of these trends—decorative inks. Several business units in the company and its ink suppliers collaborated to develop a prototype label for PET bottles that features two new ink technologies. The PET “Fluid!” water bottle sports a 50-micron PETG rotogravure, reverse-printed shrink sleeve. The first is a new interference “flip” ink that changes from one color to another as the label is tilted. In addition to the reverse printed inks, a pearlescent, white tint ink is surface-printed on the label’s water droplets and top copy to add depth to these areas. Alcoa Flexible Packaging is making these print technologies available on any shrink sleeve substrate.

Howard Millstein, president of Ameri-Seal in Chatsworth, Calif., and OSIO’s Whipple may be competing printers but they are both shrink sleeve evangelists as well. “Little by little, customers are switching from pressure sensitive labels to full sleeves,” Millstein says. “Companies are looking for shelf presence through unique shapes. Sleeves are way to do this because you can’t put a pressure sensitive on the front and back of some of these surfaces and some of the new shapes won’t fit into silk screening equipment. Sleeves also offer more real estate for information and since the process is reverse printed, it is completely product resistant.”

Millstein also points out that although people perceive shrink sleeves as a more expensive alternative to pressure sensitive labels and they can be, customers have to make sure they are making a legitimate comparison. “It really depends on the materials you’re comparing,” he says. What’s more, Millstein points out that improving technology continues to streamline the process and lower costs. “Three to four years ago the shrink factor for a label was 60 percent,” he says. “Today with PETG, we can achieve an 80 percent shrink factor.”

Whipple, whose company’s printing plant is in South Korea, notes that they also sell Korean PVC to domestic printers who are their competitors. “Domestic suppliers continue to reduce their costs. Today it’s at least 20 percent less than three years ago. It’s an evolution,” Whipple says.

“I’ve never seen anything like the growth of popularity for shrink sleeves over the last five years,” he continues. “I’ve even seen it used on products like potted plants and candles. The process can adapt to any container, and the technology has improved so that now a shrink line can do 500 bottles a minute. That’s nine a second. When the technology was introduced in the 1980s a result of the Tylenol tampering case, the machines could only apply 100 labels per minute. And today, these faster machines are half the price.”

Market Review: Label Technology by By Noel Jeffrey

Label Styles Get Fancier with New Shrink Sleeve Capabilities, Digital Customization, and Flashy Printing

If anything, the overwhelming design trend for labels is to make their silent shouts from store shelves even louder than ever in order to attract consumer attention. As a result, anyone who hasn’t shopped for the past couple of years would be amazed at how different products look due to the increasing use of shrink sleeves as well as high-style pressure sensitives, and even customized and regionalized labels. In aggregate, there’s been a change of scenery that continues to accelerate, especially in supermarkets.

“Shrink wrap is huge,” says Bert Hodapp, COO and owner of Chicago’s Kaleidoscope Imaging, a firm that creates packaging prototypes, comps, and production art. “It permits structural branding because you can show off the shape of the package. For example, WD 40 has developed a proprietary shaped can—and it’s also a way to fight counterfeit products.” (See “Wow! What A Package!”, Package Design, Jan/Feb 2004, p. 64.)

Hodapp notes that pressure sensitive labels are being used for structural branding as well—he calls it “the no label look.” Hodapp adds, “A clear pressure sensitive label shows off the package. The next step is making the pressure sensitive part of decorating. For example, a soft soap container with clear labeling can fit into a home’s décor.”

As for regionalized labeling, made possible by digital presses like the HP Indigos that can vary each individual image, Hodapp believes that while the cost of digital consumables is still too high for the industry to go “all digital,” he does see value in the process now. For example, he notes that in Toronto alone, Frito Lay offers a different chip package for each area of the city. Soft drink companies that offer to redeem cans at certain theme parks also require the customization made possible by digital. For example, if Six Flags is redeeming Coke cans, their image would be printed on the can while a similar offer might have Universal Studios or Knott’s Berry Farm—whatever the appropriate name happens to be.

Phil Angevine, owner of Logmatix, based in Marietta, Georgia, also sees the benefit of variable data digital printing. His company prints flexo product labels and coupons. Logmatix also offers thermal transfer printing including sequentially numbered preprinted bar codes and warehouse labels. He is about to acquire his first digital color printer, a desktop VIPColor Technologies label printer that will allow him to offer short-run color labels that are too costly to run on a flexo press, and allow him to vary label images easily. “We see that fitting into the service bureau part of our business,” Angevine says. “We will be able to achieve 600 dpi color without plates.”

Not only is NAFM’s shrink labeling machine LX-350 built for 24-hour operation even in the harshest environment, it is capable of handing the 40 micron (1.5 mil) rather than traditional 50 micron (2 mil) film. This is the savings of 20% in running material, and it saves tremendously as well as makes the user achieve Greener Environment.

NAFM’s LX200 shrink labeling machine is capable of using the 40 micron (1.5 mil) rather than traditional 50 micron (2 mil) film. This is the savings of 20% in running material, and it saves tremendously as well as makes the user achieve Greener Environment.

NAFM shrink labeling machine LX500 is capable of handling thinner film which conserves energy and is better for the environment.

Label Machine LX500

New film for LX500 uses 40 micron (1.5 mil) rather than traditional 50 micron (2 mil) film.  This is the savings of 20% in running material, and it saves tremendously as well as makes the user achieve a Greener Environment.

The LX-500 is a high speed machine built for 24-hour operation even in the harshest environment. Its heavy-duty frame provides a stable base for fast and accurate label placement. Nominal running speed is 500cpm for 6″ tall containers. The follower Motion Control System (MCS) effectively reaches label placement efficiency of 99.5%.