Speciality Packaging

BUILDING WINE & SPIRITS BRANDS WITH INNOVATIVE PACKAGING

Constituting the highest value sector of the beverage market, wine and spirits brands rely on premium packaging to differentiate their products and create excitement on retail shelves, especially when seeking to maximize the potential of new product launches, brand refreshes and holiday gift-giving seasons.

To learn more about emerging trends within the European wine and spirits market, International Bottler & Packer recently interviewed Didier Sourisseau, Vice President at CROWN Speciality Packaging, a subsidiary of Crown Holdings, Inc. (Crown).

Packaging plays a key role in differentiating brands and driving sales throughout the beverage industry. However, for wine and spirits brands, which operate at the top tier of the spectrum, the importance of packaging is intensified. These premium products often epitomize leisure and luxury. As such, these brands require an outward appearance of high quality, elegance and sophistication. When you factor in that wines and spirits function as gift items during holiday seasons and special occasions, the need for unique packaging is heightened even further.

Great care is taken to cultivate premium images for wine and spirits brands. Serving as a silent spokesperson on store shelves and in consumer homes, packaging has become one of the most important ingredients in the adoption and maintenance of a brand's key messaging. For example, modern beverage brands often rely on dynamic package shapes, sizes and colors to maximize point-of-sale impact, draw consumer attention and reflect product quality. Wine and spirits brands consistently serve as vital examples of this trend.

Unlike other types of beverage products, wines and spirits are often consumed over time, typically during multiple separate servings. A premium bottle of whiskey, for instance, is often consumed over a period of many months which is very rare for a consumer product. Package durability becomes an important requirement for products with long consumption lives, and metal is an ideal material to offer such robustness.

Furthermore, as consumers hold on to wine and spirits products, there is longer exposure to brand imagery and messaging displayed on packaging, a key marketing benefit. This exposure is further lengthened for innovative packages that are both attractive and strong, which have a tendency to be reused once the wine or spirits products are emptied, often serving as collectable items or household containers.

Metal packaging can feature a wide range of creative decorative finishes that serve as highly effective and cost-efficient promotional platforms. This variety of decorating techniques allow metal packaging to take on the precise look a brand is trying to capture. For example, metal can provide a brand with a premium vintage look but it can also be sleek, progressive and modern.

One decorative technology available for metal packaging is embossing. Embossing is an effective way to achieve a high quality look while emphasizing specific imagery, such as brand names or logos, with a 3-dimensional flare. One brand who used this technology with great success was leading scotch whiskey provider Morrison Bowmore. The brand created considerable point-of-purchase excitement when it adopted an elegant and eye-catching package featuring an embossed image of a dragon for their Islay Single Malt scotch whiskey. The package was presented with the Supreme Gold Award from the Metal Packaging Manufacturers' Association (MPMA) for multi-level embossing onto visually striking graphics.

A multitude of other decorative finishes, such as crackle effect, mirror effect, color-change, matte, sparkling, soft-touch, debossing, lenticular and holographic effect, serve as tools for wine and spirits brands eager to grow sales with premium metal packaging. The novelty finishes create motion, differentiation and impact at point-of-purchase in liquor stores, supermarkets and duty-free airport shops.

This stand-out packaging is especially important during busy holiday seasons when wines and spirits are popular gift items. At this time of year, brands often turn to special promotional packaging in tune with holiday themes to maximize gift-giving potential. Decorative metal packaging is a highly effective and cost-efficient retail-advertising tool, and it can serve as a complementary effort to other types of promotions. For instance, innovative wine and spirits brands may adopt metal packaging that incorporates holiday images and designs mirrored by simultaneous large-scale media campaigns. These campaigns may include a variety of outreach efforts, including print advertisements, subway poster platforms, etc.

There has been a growing tendency within a number of European markets to sell multiple bottles of wine or spirits together in one package. Metal packaging can be a very efficient and stylish way to develop multi-bottle packaging solutions. Crown recently created a number of multi-bottle tins for leading Luxembourg wine and cremant producer Les Domaines de Vinsmoselle (Art & Vin). Able to hold between 1 and 4 bottles of wine or champagne, the 3-piece metal packages are able to provide the necessary durability to support the weight of multi-bottle packaging while also conveying a sophisticated image reflective of the high quality of the Luxembourg brand.

One very innovative package Crown designed this year was the holographic canister we developed for leading French champagne brand Nicolas Feuillatte. Created to maximize point-of-sale impact and reinforce the company's sophisticated brand image, the canister's holographic finish was ideal to support a new "Blue Disco" champagne promotion that the company was launching for its popular product.

Crown created the 3-piece champagne container using Protact® Holographic polymer-coated steel from Corus Packaging Plus. Working with this material, we developed an advanced method of printing directly on holographic sheet. This technology breakthrough provided a level of consistent high quality print and registration on holographic metal sheet that had not previously been available to the packaging industry. As a result of this printing advancement, the dazzling holographic Nicolas Feuillatte package not only creates movement and excitement on store shelves, it also features crisp, quality print that is reflective of this premium brand. As a secondary advantage, the canister's holographic effect also helps to support anti-counterfeiting measures due to the difficulty of reproducing this advanced technology.

The MPMA recently honored the Nicolas Feuillate holographic container with a 'Best in Metal' award for its strong shelf appeal and unique graphics. The striking champagne package was the overall winner in the competition's Promotional category.

Crown Holdings, Inc., through its subsidiaries, is a leading supplier of packaging products to consumer marketing companies around the world. World headquarters are located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In Europe: Martin Stenson, Marketing & Development Manager, CROWN Speciality Packaging; Tel: +44 1623 676 242; Email: martin.stenson@eur.crowncork.com

For editorial inquiries: Michael F. Dunleavy, Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Public Relations; Tel: (215) 698-5051; Email: mdunleavy@crowncork.com.    

For investors: Timothy J. Donahue, Senior Vice President – Finance; Tel: (215) 698-5088.