Top Flexible Packaging Converters

A singular focus on sleeve labels, from design through application, is at the heart of SleeveCo's success as a flexible packaging converter.

SHRINKING IS GOOD for SleeveCo—that's what they do best. Since the company's inception in 1988, this Dawsonville, Ga.-based flexible packaging converter has been completely dedicated to sleeve labels, both shrink and stretch.

This singular focus on sleeve labels is what makes the company distinctive, says Martin Wilson, vice president of sales and marketing. He also says it's the reason why SleeveCo has been able to work with some of the world's largest and most innovative consumer goods companies on many challenging projects.

SleeveCo is a family-owned business with more than 125 employees and 7 printing presses. In addition to a full in-house prepress and graphic arts department, it also focuses further downstream in the process, manufacturing a wide range of sleeve-application equipment. When dealing with complex implementations of shrink labels, everything must be done right—from design through application—and SleeveCo offers expertise throughout the entire process.

The company has recently completed a major $5 million expansion program to support its growth plans, adding about 10,000 square feet to its facility. The expansion also included a new eight-color flexographic printing press; a laminating system; 8-, 9-, and 11-color rotogravure presses; a rotogravure printing press with laminating capabilities; an expanded platemaking department; an art department; a computer-controlled 16-station ink blending system; and a new quality control laboratory.

Producing high-quality shrink sleeves

SleeveCo provides shrink labels for some very demanding markets, including automotive aftermarket, cosmetics, consumer goods, and lawn and garden products. It uses solvent-based inks on a range of substrates that includes PVC, high-shrink PVC, PETG, OPS, and OPP for gravure printing and PP for its flexo printing.

For its printing presses, SleeveCo has settled on Chesnut presses on the gravure side and PCMC presses for flexo. Wilson says the main reasons for the use of these presses include the support they have always received from the two companies, along with the companies' reputations in the industry.

In addition, he says, "The quality that these presses produce allows us to be more competitive in our markets. We also have the only 11-color Chesnut press in our industry, which allows us to offer our customers more vibrant labels. The PCMC and Chesnut presses provide us with the ability to deliver exceptional products time after time to our customers and to use specialty inks."

With the ability to do either gravure or flexo printing, SleeveCo can apply the appropriate technology for the application. Flexo fits the bill for applications requiring 100 percent recyclable material, tear-off coupons and gaming pieces, and resistance from product chemicals in the containers seeping through to the labels. It also fits packages from 8 ounces to 55-gallon drums, and offers colors and line screens to handle just about any graphic intensity required, says Wilson.

With gravure, SleeveCo can provide photograph-quality images; specialty inks including metallics, pearlescents, thermatic, and matte finishes; semi-opaque capabilities for a no-label look; and backside label printing for coupons or mail-in offers.

Customer experiences

Because of its focus on sleeve labels, Wilson says that customers have come to SleeveCo for a wide range of projects, from ordinary applications to the most complicated and innovative. The company will go through months of R&D, as needed, to perfect a job in all critical areas including sizing, distortion, and graphics.

Wilson highlights the months of development that went into the shrink label for Pennzoil-Quaker State's 10W-30 Motor Oil container. "The oil bottle is shaped like a race car and everyone else in the industry told the company that this application was not suitable for a full-body label. Our prepress department had to get the label to distort in the correct areas so the label would shrink perfectly onto the car (the wheels and hood on the label had to match up perfectly with the wheels and hood on the bottle)." In addition, SleeveCo worked with the bottle manufacturers to get the bottle to the correct density for shrinking and also developed a specialty system to apply the labels.

Another challenging project successfully completed was for Blue Corral's Black Magic product line. The company wanted to put its trigger spray bottles into full-body labels. The main challenge came from the distortion around the neck of the bottle. SleeveCo developed a solution using a proprietary blend of materials that could handle the shrink ratio from the small dimension at the top of the bottle to the larger dimension at the bottom. The use of the full-body shrink sleeve allowed the customer to use the side panels of the containers for legally required safety information, freeing up space on the back of the container to cross-promote other products, says Wilson.

Combining its ability to use specialty inks with its shrink labels has helped bring in business that would have otherwise gone elsewhere, says Wilson. "For example, one of our customers, White Rock Distilleries, chose to change their package from an expensive frosted etched glass to a full-body label that delivers the same effect through a matte finish. This allowed the company to save a lot of money and inventory stock bottles that they use on other projects."

Issues and opportunities

Though SleeveCo is well positioned in a growing segment of the package-printing market, it still faces some stiff challenges.

"Our biggest issues stem from end-user demands for speed to market and major retailers (like Wal-Mart) reducing the amount of time they are giving our customers to get products to market and reducing the quantities they are requiring," states Wilson. "Our key to success is facing these issues head on, and taking care of them by setting up the initial project correctly. This allows us to provide speed to market for our customers." The company is also exploring further enhancements to its short-run capabilities.

These challenges aside, Wilson predicts a bright future for sleeve labels. "The options are literally endless for new packaging applications," he says. "With the further development and understanding of the capabilities of shrink sleeves, blow molders are now able to create odd-shaped containers, offering customers bottles that are eye-catching and more ergonomic than ever before. Even though shrink-sleeve labels are a bit more expensive than pressure-sensitive labels or paper labels, the value gained is well worth the expense."

SleeveCo is continuing to invest and expand its array of capabilities in this growing market segment. Wilson reports the recent acquisition of a local company called Easy Contract Labeling (ECL) to complete its Packaging Services Division. ECL is a contract labeling company that currently runs five production lines. SleeveCo will soon be adding an additional two lines to support this new arm of its business.

by Tom Polischuk, editor-in-chief

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