Ste. Michelle drives EarthLabel

Les Wallace is the packaging manager at Ste. Michelle Wine Estates. Operating under the procurement group, Wallace is responsible for all wine packaging development and approval of what’s selected – capsule, cork, labels, shippers, bottles.

Ste. Michelle’s Snoqualmie Winery, which uses sustainable and organic practices in its winemaking, uses 100 percent postconsumer waste (PCW) facestock with EarthCoating and 1.2M PET release liner, which replaces a one mil OPP laminate for moisture barrier. Wallace explains,‘EarthCoating gives us the moisture and cold performance we need, and greatly reduces the amount of plastic we’re using.

‘Sustainability is important to our organization. Overall from a packaging standpoint, we work on best practices and try to find reduction in materials while maintaining quality,’ Wallace explains. ‘This coating fits with our strategy to continue to reduce the footprint we are leaving with all of our products.’

Collotype Labels USA successfully commercialized the label construction, called EarthLabel, on the West Coast. The material is produced for the converter at Coating Excellence International in Wrightstown, Ohio. Collotype Labels worked with its supplier to conduct trial coatings, making adjustments to achieve solid coat weights and insure proper paper selection for optimum printing and good bonding strength with mineralized resin. Once extrusion performance was verified, the material’s endurance was tested further to meet critical supply chain requirements.

Wallace explains, ‘We started with blank labels including some design elements, embossing and texture in the paper. The first steps went extremely well and we quickly moved into production trials. We also ran trials on our bottling lines to insure productive label application. The EarthCoating really almost becomes a part of the paper and improves the performance quite a bit both during label application and in wet-strength.’

Initially Ste. Michelle made a soft transition to EarthLabel. Now 100 percent of the Snoqualmie Winery white wine brand labels use the material. Already other Ste. Michelle brands that require labels with wet-strength have transitioned to EarthLabel, and this will continue where Wallace and his team sees the opportunity.