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68 WINES&VINES May 2015 PACKAGING "Trials are conducted with the packaging center key stakeholders and the capability co- ordinator, then we feed back the results to marketing to make sure they're comfortable with the results," Sitters said. The same process happened more recently with the Pepperjack reds, with blank labels sourced for the trials. The packaging center gets anywhere between three and 12-weeks' notice on new projects like these, depending on their complexity, but every now and then there will be bad news for the marketing and design departments. "Sometimes the capability of the labeler, label design, paper stock and the bottle just don't work together, so one or more of the elements will have to be changed," Sitters said. The Pepperjack Graded Collection has turned out to be a big success story, earning a design and packaging award at London's Drinks Business Awards. Rowena Curlewis, co- founder and managing director of The Collective design consultants in Sydney, said the spiral wrap label was the first of its kind in Australia. "Our brief was to come up with a solution that was as dis- tinctive as—and complemented— the Pepperjack core tier's highly recognizable cream label," Cur- lewis said. "Our solution was to utilize the angled label but keep it going all the way around and up the bottle. The distinctive Pep- perjack label angle and cream brand color unite the two tiers, while the detailed foiling and extraordinary label form elevates Graded as a very special offering. This label was not only challenging from a design perspective, but the logistics to machine label a bottle like this were enormous. It is by far the largest label ever applied at Treasury Wine Estates or produced by printers." Casey says the technology that helps achieve this sort of result is fantastic, but she still rates her team as her biggest asset. "In terms of making it work, it comes down to the expertise of our people, and everyone loves taking on new projects like that. The people here are proud of the products we're working with," she said. "The more you add to the labels, the more complex it gets for the labeling ma- chine. But we work it out pretty quickly. We run our trials on down time because we have to adjust to different programs, different stations and different settings. "It's a case of getting everything working and then seeing how it all runs at full speed. We pride ourselves in the quality of the job; our target is 99% accu- racy, and we've been above that for three years. If you get the process right, things run smoothly. But the variation of what we do is interesting and exciting." Walk a mile in their shoes C a s e y ' s m o d e l o f management has a walk-a-mile-in-their- Wines & Vines Digital Edition View this issue on your tablet, smartphone or online at winesandvines.com/digitaledition Subscribe online at winesandvines.com/subscribe winesandvines.com Danni Casey Placement of The Gables' label took several hours to perfect.