Italian craft brewer Baladin has updated its packaging using direct-to-pack variable printing in an effort to engage Millennial customers.
Baladin was founded by Teo Musso in 1986. It introduced POP, Italy’s first craft beer in cans in 2015. These featured six different designs using different labels – one for each design – to lend a sophisticated, collector’s item feel to the brand.
Looking to revamp the look of its craft beer range and extend the collectability of the cans, Baladin tasked Crown Bevcan Europe & Middle East with enhancing its position in the eyes of Millennial drinkers using its Accents variable printing technology. This technology allows up to 24 different designs to be printed in a single run.
Baladin developed 12 new designs that could be mixed on a single pallet and printed in one go. This process creates a range of cans for brands seeking to encourage customers to view their products as highly customised or personalised, while printing the cans in just one production run.
Crown’s designers worked closely with Baladin’s graphic artists to ensure the desired result was achieved. Typically, only a small part of the design is decorated using variable printing. For POP, the process is used on a wider can surface, with six out of the eight colours used being variable. Each can design is then numbered from one to 12, making it easy for consumers to collect all the cans after consumption.
Mr Musso said, ‘It has been a rewarding experience in working with Crown to achieve this unprecedented level of customised graphic art on our product packaging.
‘When we started this project, we were looking for striking, colourful designs that would appeal to the Millennials’ original tastes. Crown’s beverage can is so much more than a functional tool to contain one of our live beers; it is also an amazing communication device for our brand messaging.’
Crown noted that the use of cans also fits into the drive towards sustainability, particularly amongst Millennials. Cans are 100% and infinitely recyclable without loss of properties, noted the company, and the infrastructure to collect and process them is advanced across Europe and beyond.
Véronique Curulla, marketing and business development director at Crown Bevcan Europe, said, ‘We are so proud to have been a part of this exciting project with Baladin brewery. The team effort of its creative minds and our technical experts achieved both the most colourful variable print on the beverage can and occupying the most surface area ever achieved by us with this method. Once again, this shows how dynamic and creative the new and fast-growing categories like craft beer are with beverage cans.’
She continued, ‘In addition to being fully recyclable and offering the best product protection, cans are a gateway to a robust set of decorative finishes which allow for unrestrained creativity.’
