They’ve been around for years and come in all shapes and sizes. Little by little, heat-shrinkable sleeves have been replacing traditional labels and wrappers. Proving to be more than just industry hype, shrink sleeves are successful marketing tools that literally place your product in the spotlight from "head to toe”. Unsurprisingly, that is exactly what DCM experienced when they decided to add shrink sleeves to the packaging on their line of liquid fertilizers.

Why switch to shrink sleeves?

Shrink sleeves are a form of printed plastic wrap or film that is often used to package beverages, yogurts, sauces, jams, cleaning products, cosmetics and many other household items. One of the major advantages of using shrink sleeves over traditional labels or wrap-arounds is that the shrink process allows the plastic film to form a seamless seal around any type of container. As such, shrink film is the only material of its kind that can fully cover the surface area of any container. For marketers, 360° printing means maximum communication with the consumer and unlimited potential for graphics.

There are also many technical advantages. As a full-body sleeve that covers the entire surface of a container, using a shrink sleeve makes it possible to place a perfect, tamper-resistant seal around the product. However, this perfect seal doesn’t detract from the user friendliness of the packaging. By providing a perforated line at the neck or cap of the container, consumers can easily remove the packaging. In addition, the type of film used, whether OPS, PET or PVC, depends on the form (shrink factor) and composition of the container.

What does St-Luc have to offer over the major players in the shrink sleeve market?
In a word: flexibility!
Until now, the market for full-body sleeves has been dominated by a few large, international printers. Buyers of shrink sleeves have had to deal with long delivery times and high start-up fees. In addition, large printers have been reluctant to print low to medium volume sleeve series.
St-Luc is responding to these issues by providing faster delivery times, competitive rates and better service. The launch of this new segment in the market went hand in hand with thorough research and development work and several important investments in equipment. This allowed St-Luc to fulfil its first shrink sleeve orders in late 2008. The investments that quickly followed led not only to additional orders, but also to new clients.

DCM achieves a success story with fertilizer revamp

DCM, the Belgian leader in organic fertilizers, decided to entrust the printing of its entire range of liquid fertilizers to St-Luc. Having originally been provided with adhesive labels, the packaging for the entire product range was restyled as a series of attractive full-body shrink sleeves.

St-Luc took a couple of minutes to talk to Catrin de Cuyper, Marketing Coordinator at DCM.

Catrin, would you describe DCM in a few sentences for us?
Founded in 1976, DCM (De Ceuster Meststoffen) has expanded to become the Belgian leader in organic fertilizers and a pioneer in fertilization, soil fertility and substrates in the European market. Today, DCM produces 30,000 tons of fertilizer for both the professional and hobby sector, supplying both national and international markets. In addition to fertilizers and soil conditioners, we offer our clients a large selection of quality potting soil and cultivation substrates, lime products, covering materials, grass seed and specialized pond products.

How would you distinguish DCM’s corporate vision from that of its co-competitors?
It is our quality and service, research and innovation, as well as expert advice and support that form the core elements of our corporate philosophy. We ensure customer satisfaction by providing our clients with advanced quality products and services. Training and business concept development are a major priority for DCM. In future, we would like to develop new concepts and solutions tailored to our customers worldwide, and to strive to be the green partner of choice for horticulture and landscape professionals as well as home gardeners. Of course, respect for both man and nature is to continue to play a central role throughout our development.

What role did this vision play in the development of your range of liquid fertilizers?
A major one. Regular evaluation of the packaging for our products is part of our continuous process of innovation. The idea of employing sleeving as a means of communicating with the customer was something that attracted us from the very beginning. As soon as prices for sleeve-printing came within our budgetary requirements, we knew it was time to act.
Consumers are of course attracted by bright new packaging, and since shrink sleeves have so much more to offer in that area than a simple label, the decision to switch was an easy one.

Apart from their aesthetic advantage, what other advantages did you see in switching over to shrink sleeves?
Shrink sleeves allow us to make maximum use of the space on the bottle we use as a container for our liquid fertilizer products. We can now employ the entire sleeve in order to communicate our messages, as opposed to labels, which were limited to the front and back side only.
There were also a couple of additional reasons we had for switching over to sleeves. In addition to being labelled, the bottles that we used for our liquid fertilizer products used to come in specific colours in order to more clearly express the link between the product and its use. Since we now work with sleeves, we buy all of our liquid fertilizer containers in a single colour, considerably simplifying the order and follow-up process, as well as lowering the costs per container. An extra bonus is that the sleeve offers additional protection for the cap, which is produced as part of the sleeve design.

The new packaging has been on the market for a while now. How is it being received?
The first responses have been very positive. The bottles in their newly designed sleeves have been well received at garden centres, both by management and purchasers, as well as by end consumers.
These positive reactions coupled with the various advantages mentioned means that the use of labels on the 400ml and 800ml bottles will be completely phased out over time. In addition, we plan on keeping up with any new trends in sleeve packaging.

For the application of the sleeves, you’ve been working together with Helios Packaging, who has chosen St-Luc as its preferred printing supplier. How has this three-way partnership worked out for you?
The partnership between St-Luc and Helios Packaging has gone very smoothly so far and is expected to further develop in future. Helios Packaging is our perfect partner for the application of the sleeves and we decided specifically to work with St-Luc because they guarantee the best quality and price. You can certainly consider us a satisfied customer!

No one is more committed to caring for our environment than St-Luc.

As a sign of its continued growth, St-Luc chose to renovate an industrial building in the Northern French town of Bondues for its French branch, Microbox Packaging. The renovation included the installation of photovoltaic cells on the roof of the building, demonstrating our clear choice for renewable energy.

A high-tech, energy-producing roof

In order to meet our own tough insulation standards, which strive far beyond the legal requirements, we decided to completely dismantle the existing roof and replace it with acoustically perforated steel roofing with a damp-proof membrane. Stone wool completes the insulation and the top, water-proof layer is composed of a synthetic membrane of EPDM rubber (ethylene propylene diene Monomer).

St-Luc then quickly decided to incorporate its green principles into the construction of the new roof by employing it to generate power for the building. Analysis showed that the best solution would be to use an EPDM membrane with integrated amorphous photovoltaic cells.  The cells have been directly integrated in the water-proof membrane over a surface area of 2,500m², spanning half of the total surface area of the roof.
This high-tech, energy-producing roof allows us to produce up to 85 kW h, which could power around 15-20 homes. This is currently the largest collection of photovoltaic cells north of Paris.

But, there’s more…

In addition, our commitment to being a quality-focussed and environmentally-conscious company has led us to further improve insulation by adding double walls to the building. This was achieved by adding aesthetically-pleasing polyurethane sandwich panels, which in addition to improving the insulation of the building also improve the building's appearance.

The result of these modifications is a building that consumes very little power and remains unaffected by external circumstances. By allowing us to maintain a constant temperature of 18-20°C and a humidity level of 50-55%, the building provides the perfect environment for the storage, printing and processing of cardboard.

This environmentally conscious attitude that permeates everything we do – from our facilities to our way of working – is perfectly in keeping with the commitment to quality and service at the core of our sustainable business practices. Our consistent approach to sustainability means that you can trust that your packaging needs are in the hands of a socially engaged and responsible partner. From our facilities and production procedures to our approach to processing raw materials, we are proud to say that we are contributing to the environmental effort and investing in the energy of the future.

Trends is a leading Belgian financial and economics magazine which annually awards the fastest growing companies in the country with the "Gazelle” distinction. The recipients of the 2010 “Trends Gazellen” Awards for the province of East Flanders were announced in Ghent on Wednesday 28 April. Just as in previous years, Trends distinguished the companies that invigorate the competitiveness of their region and have a positive influence on the corporate atmosphere in the small, medium and large business categories.

This was the second year in a row that St-Luc joined this selective group of "Gazelles”, achieving 33rd place, which is slightly better than last year!

View St-Lucs diploma here.

“On the road together, stronger together” is the motto behind Socialist Party leader  Caroline Gennez’s weekly Monday visits to businesses  in the Flanders region. She visits companies in many different sectors that distinguish themselves in the area of Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship (Maatschappelijk Verantwoord Ondernemen - MVO) in order to get a good idea of the reality that businesses face and keep a finger on the pulse of business. By doing so, she hopes to be able to transfer new insights and good practise to the political agenda.

Caroline Gennez chooses to visit St-Luc

According to Ms. Gennez, she chose St-Luc from among various candidate companies for obvious reasons: "Strong growth in 2009 coupled with good results in the area of a socially responsible staff policy were the reasons behind our wanting to get to know this company better”. As a matter of fact, St-Luc had received 3 HR distinctions in 2009 and 2010: the ADMB Award for exceptional performance in HR in 2009, the provincial Equal Opportunities or "Gelijke Kansen” Prize in 2009 and the Pioneering Diversity "Pioniersprijs Diversiteit” distinction for 2010.

Rewarding Innovation and Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship

Ms. Gennez’s visit took place on 29 March. She met with Managing Director Nico Dhondt, HR head Fanny Dhondt and PR manager Ruth Ameye, taking the time to learn about the company, its products and processes.  She showed genuine interest while talking with a few St-Luc employees about their jobs and gauging the pulse at St-Luc with regard to a number of important issues surrounding business legislation. The Socialist Party leader was noticeably impressed by the ambition of the management team. It was thanks to their well-developed vision based on a persistent strategy within a socially responsible framework that St-Luc gained such positive results. In accordance with this, Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship remains a guiding force behind the redevelopment of various business processes. One thing that Ms. Gennez definitely took away from the various discussions was the need to introduce universally mandatory standards for Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship: "Anyone can say they are applying Responsible Entrepreneurship, but in reality, there are many pitfalls along the way. At the moment it’s still very much a niche, something that is usually one of the first areas to be cut in times of economic crisis, due to a short-sighted vision of doing business. Because there is no standardization, many companies use the Social Responsibility label in order to improve their image, which is unfair for those companies that take Social Responsibility seriously on a daily basis and invest in it.

Ms. Gennez summarized her visit in the following terms: "St-Luc is textbook example of true entrepreneurship in the best sense of the word. It is a family business with focus that still managed to grow and hire new employees despite the crisis. That proves that it pays to innovate and that Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be a hollow concept. A company like St-Luc that respects employee diversity and well-being and provides training in-house has a better chance to emerge stronger from the crisis than a company that is only focussed on maximizing profit in the short-term.

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There is a reason for celebration at St-Luc, because on 23 February in Antwerp, the company received the "Pioniersprijs Diversiteit 2010" (Pioneer Diversity Award 2010).  In the 50 or more employees category, St-Luc was rewarded by Jobkanaal for its diversity-related efforts and its progressive personnel policy and can now, for a period of one year, call itself a Pioneer. St-Luc has thus won its third award (in addition to the ADMB Award and the Provinciale Prijs Gelijke Kansen in 2009) and accordingly hopes to become a good practices model for other companies. As a growing player on the market, St-Luc demonstrates that it is entirely possible to implement diversity in a high-technology environment where quality is of central importance and to contribute to securing a good end result. “We see the added value of diversity in our company every day. Employees are contented, feel good in the company and are proud of their work and of their (diverse) work environment. Everyone feels respected and respects others. There is room for open communication and employees know that their needs and requests will be met. We want to continue with this project!  In concrete terms, we want to implement and develop our current activities in collaboration with various partners and with our own personnel.” (Fanny Dhondt, HR manager)

For pictures, click here

For more articles, check interagora.be, hrupdate.be, www.unizo.be, www.nieuws.be, www.avs.be, www.standaard.be, www.voka.be

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