Soft Drinks Packaging Insights

In the last 2 years soft drinks sales have exploded, climbing by nearly 15%, as a growing number of adults are choosing to avoid or reduce their alcohol consumption. Two common design and branding themes that we’ve seen drinks companies opting for are:

• Vibrant colours and a health-orientated feel 
• A strong sense of style and sophistication (especially where bubbles are involved)

 
A critical factor for brands looking for success in this lucrative market (now worth more than £157 million per year), is their product’s ability to be noticed in a crowded environment. Given that most soft drinks are packaged in glass bottles or are turning to flexible packaging, labelling technologies offer one of the best methods of decoration – allowing brands to communicate their messages from the shelf, and give their product ranges as much visibility as possible. 

We have found that spot gloss, foiling and ultra-clear labels are very popular in this sector. Click here to learn more about bottle labels.

30 Years of Label Manufacturing

We’re very proud to be celebrating our 30th birthday this year! That’s three decades of expertly manufacturing the highest quality labels, and helping our customers to achieve the best possible packaging results.

Here are some of our vital statistics:

• A lot of beautiful labels (we printed over 300 million last year alone)
• 25 printing awards, including 2 World Label Awards
• 300% growth in the last 14 years
• 7 AVT digital inspection units (we were one of the first to run inspection both on presses and finishing lines)
• 14 years ISO 9001 quality standards accreditation
• 4 years  PS 9000 quality standards accreditation
• Over 100 happy customers in at least 7 industry sectors
• Up to 12 in-line printing processes
• Preferred supplier status with many leading brands
• 58 awesome, professional, skilled and all-around splendid personnel :)

And here’s a timeline showing some of our key milestones since 1984:

Want to get noticed? Go invisible…

We’ve witnessed a steadily growing demand for ‘invisible’ or ‘no-look’ label solutions. This trend reflects the ever increasing pressure on brands to offer stand-out packaging - research suggests that up to 60% of consumer’s initial selections are based on look alone, having little to do with what’s written on the pack. Labelling technologies are extremely flexible, and top quality manufacturers (like us!) can produce sleek, premium and highly decorative packaging effects.

There are several ways that this outcome can be achieved, and we’ve worked through the processes with each of them to deliver beautiful results. Take a look at some of these examples:

• Labels that are tailor made to match the surface of the component perfectly
• Labels that are ultra-transparent and can hardly be seen at all
• Stealthy tube labels that are crimped into the pack
• Clever label designs that are expertly specified and carefully printed

Beautiful Labels for the Drinks Industry

Within the beverage sector, self-adhesive labelling is growing in popularity around the world, and with good reason! There are both creative and functional advantages to labelling drinks products - as supermarkets take over from smaller retailing outlets, the need to be different and stand-out is greater than ever.

What brands are looking for now

We’ve seen an increasing demand from drinks brands for transparent label base materials, especially on spirits drinks and other glass bottles. Our carefully specified labels deliver great ‘wet-out’ which means they’re practically invisible on the bottle.

Another trend in beverage packaging is gold and silver embellishments, which really add an extra-premium finish to the bottle. We’re experts in cold foiling, a technology that we can combine with multiple other printing processes to phenomenal effect. 

A third label effect to mention is added surface texture. In order to appeal to customers on more than one level, many brands are seeking tactile enhancements for their bottle labels. In these cases we often use special varnishes to deliver raised effects that customers can feel when they lift the bottle from the shelf. (And now we have a new soft-touch material in our repertoire too!)

Our special offering

Our beautiful self-adhesive labels allow drinks brand owners to reflect their own unique design values. We offer a huge array of decorative options which can be combined together on the same label, such as raised and textured labels, beautiful metallic enhancements, and colour-shifting inks. Check out our Twitter and Pinterest feeds for lots of design inspiration!

We also deliver on functionality - our high-quality labels are resistant to moisture and temperature, and they can withstand environmental factors such as ice box storage and high speed bottling lines. Our labels are 100% digitally inspected to make sure they’re always fit for purpose. Request more info.

With our 30 years of experience at helping brands to get the best performance from their labels, we can provide expert service every step of the way.

Chocolate Fragranced Stickers for Kew Gardens

This Easter, Kew Gardens are celebrating 50 Whipple-Scrumptious years of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! The Gardens, in partnership with the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, are hosting ‘Charlie’s Chocolate Adventure’ with lots of Wonka-inspired family activities. 

Charlie’s Chocolate Adventure runs from Saturday April 5 to Monday April 21 2014.

The festival will feature The Whipple-Scrumptions Plant Hunt, Easter holiday face painting, hands-on sessions in the Great Glass Lift  and a chance to be immersed in Roald Dahl’s stories and poems as told by storytellers  (to name just a few goings-on!).

To help spread the Easter fun, we’ve printed some amazing and fantastic chocolate scented stickers – they smell just like the inside of a chocolate factory! Printed with illustrated designs by Quentin Blake, the stickers will be given out to visitors on Easter Sunday as part of the Easter egg hunt. To make the stickers, we took the choc-tastic smells and encased them in teeny-tiny capsules, before we mixed them all in with our printing inks. So when you rub the stickers the yummy chocolate is released!