Vive la France!

SOME four years ago, in securing added exposure for Richelieu brandy at Makro and Spar, both of which enjoy significant brand leverage in South Africa’s main urban areas, Distell’s marketing team searched for ways to add value at point of purchase, particularly investigating designs and concepts that would escalate sales of this premium-priced liquor during the festive season.

In fact, during the past four years, as part of an ongoing campaign, Distell has conceived four outstanding themes for Richelieu – the Bridges of Paris, Paris Café, Moulin Rouge and Richelieu Street Scene.

This year, Distell has produced 25 000 cases each of the Duc de Richelieu ‘limited edition’, depicting the Moulin Rouge and Bridges of Paris designs, for dispatch to Makro and Spar stores during the first week of October –  in time for the festive season.

Helping to realise this campaign by producing the striking shrink sleeves for the 750ml bottles was Uniprint’s Labelling & Packaging division, one of the country’s largest producers of shrink sleeves.

The sleeve was printed flexographically on Uniprint’s Nilpeter FA-4 press equipped with the latest P2P automatic register control system.

Explains Asheen Sharatkumar, Uniprint’s technical repro manager, ‘Among the challenges facing us during the printing process was the combination of fine screens made up of three process colours, not only capturing the warm natural amber tones of the brandy but also the essence of a romantic evening in Paris. It was thanks to the P2P register control on our Nilpeter press that we could maintain consistency while bringing out the vibrancy of the design – making the renditions come alive.’

From a technical aspect, printing using Esko’s HD technology requires the correct amount of ink laydown using fine aniloxes while achieving the depth and contrasts of the desired effect, with 300dpi images.

Other players in this production are DuPont’s DFH Cyrel fast plates; 45µm PET sleeve material from Klöckner Pentaplast; and inks from Flint Group Narrow Web.