Youngs invest to add shelf impact to its beer range

Young and Co Brewery has added impact to their point of sale by applying ‘wobblers’ to the caps of a selection of its beer range. It has purchased both the labels and the application machine from Pago Ltd in Colchester where it has been designed and built.

The Wobbler attracts attention at the point of sale because it ‘wobbles’.

This type of application for bottle attachment labels was specially developed for sales promotional uses on beverages with small cap diameters. The Pagomedia label hangs on a transparent strip that is stuck to the top. This form of sales promotion is convincing not only because of its flexible use in the bottling plant but also through a strong impact at the point of sale. The label starts to shake or to ‘wobble’ at the tiniest vibration or movement of air.

The machine to apply the wobblers has a PAGOmat 6/2A 170 labeling head mounted on a stainless steel mounting stand, which positions the PAGOmat to match the product, with vertical and horizontal adjustment via a hand wheel. The 170 was chosen to give greater flexibility in the future as to the size of the label required. It is fitted with adjustable machine feet, the overall width of the base stand is limited to 600mm to accommodate the production lines at the brewery. The bottles are presented to the labeling head accurately positioned across a slat conveyor, this determines the accuracy of application in that plane. There is a product sensor mounted to the PAGOmat to trigger the labeling from the top of the bottle to give improved label accuracy in the direction of the product flow. The head has vertical and horizontal adjustment, a PAGO media sensor, wipe down brush, and low reel pre warning. There is an encoder mounted to the conveyor drive shaft

The label is applied wide edge leading, and an output of 30,000 bottles per hour or 62 meters per minute is achievable. The ‘wobbler’ is a PAGOmedia construction, it incorporates a booklet with a maximum of six pages of text and graphics. A promotional ‘wobbler’ is only limited by the number of colors, the width was decided as 2/3rds of the current bottle diameter. The final folded size of the design was 50mm wide x 60 mm high with a 20 mm hanger arm.

It was a requirement for Youngs that the ‘wobbler’ hung down the front of the bottle, alignment with the front label is not crucial but it must be visible when on a supermarket shelf.