We’re all really excited about Pack Tech 2012, it’s our first time at the exhibition and we’ve been beavering away with our designers to come up with some real treats.

We’ll be showcasing a wide range of different finishes and lots of exciting new ideas, particularly from a design and branding standpoint. Expect the unexpected.

Come and have a chat and a taste; a sweet tooth is not compulsory but will help!

We were delighted to get our paws on Kooliburra Wine from Aldi.

Working with the guys from Cooper, Cooper, Cooper Design and the bottling bigwigs, Broadland Wineries, we created this fruity little brand that looks great on the shelf and on the table.

The labels were printed traditionally flexographic first and then moved onto the Digicon for finishing off. Here we were able to screen print, hot foil and emboss all in a single pass. The beauty of the Digicon is the low cost tooling without any compromise on the finished output.

Anthony from Cooper, Cooper, Cooper Design said “Label Apeel are a refreshing change, they’re a company with a real personality.” We like him.

We were really pleased to be involved with the product development, but over the moon about getting the production run.

Kooliburra Wine’s Chardonnay, Shiraz and Cabernet Shiraz give them all a go.

Rather in the fashion of one of those ‘how is it made?’ videos you used to watch at school to see how a button was sewn onto a shirt, we’ve made a short video to show you some of our production processes.

It’s for our digital printing facility, from the initial printing on our state of the art HP indigo WS6000 press, to the finishing process on the Digicon. It’s the only combination of this type running in the UK, which makes it look all polished and lovely, and ready to adorn your product on the shop shelves.

Okay, so it’s not quite Autumn yet, but it’s certainly been feeling like it. But to get it ready for the cider-making season, we’ve created new labels for Three Choirs and their cider.

Often, it’s a drink seen as being a bit old-fashioned, but the labels that we’ve created for them give their product a modern feel whilst still keeping some traditional elements. Simple graphics work well with the shiny metallic finish and allow the text to stand out on the dark green.

We’ve also left plenty of the bottle clear so you can see the drink’s lovely colour. If only we could try some more…

We admit, we did snigger a bit when our MD, Stuart, said that he’d climb to the top of the three highest peaks in the country. Then we full on laughed when he said he’d do it all in under 24 hours.

And you know what? He actually did it! In the end, Stuart raised £1,333 for the charity Wishes 4 Kids – £333 more than his original target. He completed the challenge with seven others, collectively raising a total of £8,198 between them. Well done to them all!

The charity Wishes 4 Kids grants once in a lifetime wishes to children suffering from severe and terminal illnesses. So it’s good to see the money go to such a worthy cause.

We’ve had close links to the brewery industry for years at Label Apeel, and as part of that support, every year we sponsor an award for the industry. For 2011 we sponsored the Golden Bottled Beers category of the SIBA South East Region Beer Competition 2011. The Black Cat Brewery, who had the picture above taken with our sales executive Matt, won the award.

Matt has, over the years, made links with various people who have gone on to become our customers, and he has now built up a good reputation for beverage labelling thanks to our work at SIBA.

Label Apeel will be attending SIBA North in Manchester on the 27th October.

It’s been going really very well indeed here at Label Apeel, and with all our lovely new customers, we needed someone else to help us continue to grow and still look after all our clients.

That person, swishing through the door on her white horse (well, sort of), was Jeanette Williams.

Jeanette’s been in our game since 1996. She’s worked as an area sales manager in Edinburgh and, before that, in Worcestershire. So she’s moved around the UK a fair bit. But it’s her brilliant technical knowledge and masses of experience, particularly in food labels, that led her to our doors.

Welcome aboard, Jeanette!

Our MD Stuart has just £250 to raise to meet his sponsorship goal for the charity Wishes 4 Kids. He intends to climb the three highest Peaks in the UK in 24 hours (snigger) along with a group of good friends.

To say that he’s a little nervous at the minute would be something of an understatement, so please help us make him feel better by getting the last of his sponsorship commitment in before D-Day on Saturday!

Your donations will be gratefully received here:

http://www.justgiving.com/Stuart-Kellock

Thank You.