Getting in the spirit

Much ado about miniatures

By Andy Knaggs

Producing and packaging gift packs and hampers of alcoholic tasters calls for flexible machinery, automated processes and quick job changeovers, as well as attractive packaging.

It’s that time of year again when we start thinking about festive gifts and what to buy for that difficult uncle or hard-to-please motherin-law. A perennial favourite that always goes down well is a bottle of booze to suit their tastes, and this is a sector of the drinks and drinks packaging industries that is developing in interesting ways, with products such as gift hampers and advent calendars calling for flexibility in manufacturing and packaging, quick changeovers, and complete commitment to quality assurance, without compromise on productivity.

“Where once an alcoholic present could be a risky decision, involving the purchase of one expensive full-size bottle, advent calendars allow brands to showcase their entire range of products in smaller ‘taster’ bottles or miniatures, which can lend itself to the uncertain shopper,” observes Yorkshire Packaging Systems’ managing director Glyn Johnson.

He adds, “Spirit advent calendars and gift sets make new demands of the packaging they are housed within. Yorkshire Packaging Systems has traditionally supplied drinks firms with robust, durable and thick polythene films to protect products during transit, particularly for heavy glass bottles. But these new display applications turn the tide on traditional drinks packaging, requiring high gloss, pristine presentation films to improve the attractiveness of packs for point-of-sale purposes. Drinks needed for retail displays, especially advent calendars, also need a shrink film layer to act as a tamper-evident barrier, preventing the perforated cardboard doors from being opened by any unintended recipients.”

Accordingly, YPS is seeing a shift from polythene to polyolefin films, and says the latter offers the “perfect balance between protection and promotion.” The manufacturer’s L Sealer machines, which come in automated and combination (with shrink tunnel) versions, are able to operate with both types of film, and can produce a high-quality shrink wrap, ideal for wrapping retail or multi-packs where the presentation of the product is critical.

Investing in automation Advanced Dynamics, which sells machines for bottle filling, capping and labelling, agrees that there is increased demand for drinks miniatures and gift sets, and sales executive Ciaran Dickson says that because of this “there is a lot of investment still happening within the industry, with companies needing to quickly upscale in order to fulfil this demand, often going from very manual processes to automation pretty quickly.”

Automation is of course the über-trend throughout all areas of packaging and, indeed, manufacturing. Increasingly, this trend extends to robotics and collaborative robots (or “cobots”), which are bringing efficiency to packaging lines through the use of lightweight, adaptable articulated

Drinks tasting pack for T.J. Morris by YPS

robotic arms helping with picking and packing. “These systems can offer automation opportunities to high-end, low volume drinks producers, with a relatively small investment outlay,” says Neil Sandhu, SICK UK product manager. SICK is noted as a supplier of sensor solutions for factory, logistics and process automation, gathering data that drives greater packaging efficiency. It believes its technology can help producers of high-end drinks products, with Sandhu saying, “Developments in sensor technology open up opportunities for the greater product variation of high-end drinks production, while meeting the exploding demands of e-commerce and the need for more responsive, frequent and smaller deliveries to store or home.”

Intelligent sensing applications can be implemented to support packaging of smaller and varying production runs, or batch sizes, he says. “On a flexible, automated packaging line armed with intelligent sensors, supported by fully track-and-trace product identification, it is perfectly feasible for, say, a bottle labelling or secondary packaging facility to change between batches without having to stop and restart the line at all. Be it bottle fill levels or cap colours, changes are automatically adapted for, with minimal set up and disruption. The potential for meeting market demand for product variation and mix, down to individual store level, is therefore virtually unlimited.”

Bespoke labelling Applying automation into the labelling side of production often, though not always, calls for some bespoke development, according to Advanced Dynamics’ Ciaran Dickson. He says, “Rather than ‘off the shelf’ labelling systems, there is a need to design and manufacture bespoke systems to ensure an accurate and quality finish on unique bottle shapes and designs. At the same time, it’s ensuring that the machinery is as versatile as possible, in order to meet requirements such as being able to fill, cap and label bottles from 5cl miniatures to standard 70cls. Businesses are wanting to ensure that the machinery can cope with a wide range of products, especially with new product introduction being a key growth driver for many businesses. This links into making machines ‘foolproof’ for easy changeovers.” It is an exciting time to be in the drinks sector, with technological advances making new product launches in innovative sizes and formats possible, packaged attractively to fly off the shelves.

Drinks hamper for T.J. Morris by YPS

Processes such as picking, placing, sealing, labelling and codereading can be performed at higher production speeds and to higher performance levels than ever before. With these developments come the reduced wastage, better quality control and minimal line downtime due to quick job changeovers that allow drinks producers to pursue smaller volume and higher-end products, such as gift hampers and miniatures in advent calendars. As the nation gathers around the dinner table for turkey and Christmas pudd, both they and the producers of their festive tipples might raise a miniature and say “cheers” to that.

Automation hits labelling mark Everyone hates product recalls, and in its early days, craft beer brewer Vocation had 26 pallets returned as a result of incorrect barcodes – that’s 26 pallets that had to be re-labelled at great cost in both time and money.

Experiences like this caused the Halifax company to consider better and more automated ways of labelling its boxes of beers. It produces around 12 to 14 million cans per year, and in 2020 alone, it released 51 new products. In March 2021, Vocation installed an ICE Vulcan print and apply labelling system from Clearmark Solutions, allowing the company to more quickly and accurately print labels for boxes of beer for shipment to the top five UK multiples.

Head of packaging Dan SutcliffeTasker says, “Everything sent to the retailer has to be boxed and labelled. We produce about 30 pallets a day, with 100 or 200 cases on each pallet. Anything other than our core brand needs a custom label. Since automating our labelling process we’ve had zero defects – the ICE Vulcan print and apply system is 100% fool-proof and in hindsight we should have automated sooner.”

A key feature of the ICE Vulcan is its direct-apply process rather than a blown-on label, and it is also able to accommodate changes to box size in just a few seconds. “The main concern for us was individual placement of the label,” SutcliffeTasker continues. “There is no way a human operator can stand there on an eight-hour shift and hit the same mark every time, especially when things are operating so quickly. We needed the stability and guaranteed repeatability that automation is known for.”