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!