Highly flavoured spirits refined: Co-packing enhances the brand experience

Co-packers are often involved in the realisation of creative promotional campaigns in the spirits market. This is also the case with the medium-sized Packservice group of companies in Karlsruhe. Their packaging and logistics services have long been an integral part of the marketing planning of major brands.

Whisky, rum, vodka, brandy, cognac and gin - the shelves in the shops are well stocked. And new products are added every day. Flavoured spirits are hip one minute and gone the next. The global sales markets for alcoholic beverages are therefore in a constant state of flux. It's not just sales figures that fluctuate. Manufacturers also have to constantly Rapidly changing flavour trends react. The European market, especially the German market, is a key market from the perspective of the large corporations simply because of its size, even if per capita consumption has remained at the same level for around ten years.

All the more reason for the big brands to endeavour to bring their products to the consumer. More and more on the rise: With themed additions (on-packs) or packaging in the form of exclusive gift boxes, manufacturers are offering the customer a special treat. real added valuet that generates maximum attention and makes cross-marketing possible. Professional service providers such as the Karlsruhe-based co-packing specialist Packservice support brand manufacturers behind the scenes to ensure that large quantities of goods reach retailers quickly, punctually and economically.

„We are increasingly providing our services directly in the freight forwarder's warehouse or in the bottling halls of brand manufacturers - in-house is modern outsourcing.“ Michael Spieth, Sales Manager Germany at Packservice.

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Special editions in vogue

„We support and optimise the logistics of a marketing trend that presents itself with convincing figures,“ explains Michael Spieth, who is responsible for sales in Germany at Packservice. „More than 50 per cent of spirits are now packaged as On-Packs, Coffrets or Add-ons the way to retail.“ And this involves high packaging and logistics costs, as he emphasises: „Packaging materials must be ordered in large quantities, resources must be optimally planned and warehousing and transport must be efficiently organised. In addition, special packaging solutions often require manual labour, which is far more time-consuming than machine production.“

The day-to-day work in the production halls of Packservice shows what Michael Spieth is talking about. Employees finish rum bottles with small 5 cl sample bottles so that the future buyer can convince themselves of the special bouquet of a higher quality distillate from the manufacturer. Elsewhere, the bottles of the Cuban national drink run along conveyor belts and are given a pack of cards for socialising with friends. In the case of a wine aperitif, a nail varnish is intended to provide an additional incentive to buy for the predominantly female group of buyers. In order to skilfully stage the refined goods at the PoS, displays are erected manually and loaded with the finished on-packs.

In particular seasonal events The employees also assemble large numbers of gift boxes and prepare them for dispatch to retailers: here the whisky is packaged with a high-quality stainless steel hip flask, there the rum with the accessories required for mixing cocktails. Such appealing gift packaging and special editions have an impact on consumers and significantly boost sales of spirits. In 2015 alone, the co-packing specialist finished around 4.8 million bottles of spirits in German-speaking countries.

With high speed into retail

Packservice usually only has a few weeks to realise the demanding projects, even for large orders. To guarantee a consistently high level of quality and quantity for such requirements, the Karlsruhe-based company relies on Standardised workflows and a high degree of Automation.

„At the moment, around 60 per cent of our processes are still manual, as the fragile promotional and seasonal goods require a lot of care,“ explains Michael Spieth. However, he says that the group of companies is continuously working on automating work processes at useful interfaces. In addition to semi-automated display lines, where a conveyor belt transports the Chep pallets from employee to employee, scanner-based production lines or conveyor belts with integrated scales support the staff. According to the expert, this speeds up work processes and ensures greater efficiency and safety during packing.

Packservice realises a further time saving in the often tightly scheduled order production with its so-called Campus concept, which has already successfully established itself not only with customers from the beverage industry. The service specialist manages packaging material purchasing, storage and co-packing at a central point in the warehouse of the freight forwarder or brand manufacturer. The in-house solution not only saves valuable time, but also reduces transport and storage costs.

Raw materials and packaging materials do not have to be transported to the co-packer, nor do the finished goods have to be transported back to the intermediate warehouse. In addition, the short distances increase flexibility in the event of order changes and temporary production peaks, which are common in seasonal business. „Especially in the fast-moving consumer goods market, it is necessary to be able to react quickly to changing requirements,“ reports the sales representative.

Partner of the brands

Packservice is now available at over 20 Locations in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Its customers include not only numerous industry giants from the beverage industry. Leading international manufacturers from the food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals sectors also rely on the company's many years of expertise to get their products to the retail trade in the fastest and most promotional way possible. They all use Packservice's production facilities, which are equipped with state-of-the-art machinery and IT systems. The output of the European group of companies is impressive: Every year, more than one million displays, over seven million sleeves, around ten million shrinks and five million assortment cartons leave the co-packer's production halls - and the trend is rising.