The WorldStar Awards was created by The World Packaging Organisation (WPO) and has been recognising packaging excellence from across the globe since 1970. It is the pre-eminent international award in packaging and is highly respected throughout the industry.
First Impression Labels is proud to be a WorldStar 2024 winner in the Labelling and Decoration category for our execution of the African Dew Liqueur shrink sleeve labels.
This 4-variant PET sleeve provides differentiation, visual appeal and 360 degree branding for impeccable stand out in an in an increasingly competitive market. The complex design combined reverse and surface printing to create eye-catching graphics blended with the special colour mix to match the capping.
The 40-micron sleeve is exceptionally intricate and was reverse-flexo printed in 8 colours with an added surface-print matt varnish. The metallic areas on the logo, leopard, leaf and fruit icons were created by printing high-lustre metallic silver ink onto the existing colours during the print run. Every variant has different elements to make each flavour’s design unique.
Some of the challenges that the team had to overcome in the printing and application of this label were as follows:
- Mitigating the effect of the high-lustre metallic ink on the shrinkage.
- Standardising the metallic effect on all sleeves despite the fact that the colours on each variant changed.
- Designing the vignettes so that they could cope with the shrinkage and not lose visual quality.
- Maintaining the exact position of the leopard across all variants and bottles after shrinkage.
- Matching the position of the icon above the African Dew lettering to other variants that use a self-adhesive label.
- The shrinkage had to conform perfectly to a convex shoulder at the top of the bottle.
To win this prestigious award from such a prominent and distinguished organisation is a great achievement for us. We’d like to thank everyone at the WorldStar Awards, the Shoprite Group and our amazing team for making this all possible.