In the 5,000-year long history of China, the wine and wine culture occupies a very important position in politics, economy, culture, and diplomacy. For Chinese people, liquor seems to have penetrated into all areas of social life. It is a material existence, it is a spiritual symbol.
Liquor market "blowout"
Liquor's position in the Chinese economy has never been underestimated. In recent years, it has achieved sustained growth. It is understood that China currently has more than 18,000 liquor companies and nearly 100,000 liquor brands, and it has nearly 50 ultra-large modern winemaking enterprise groups with a capacity of 10,000 liters or more. In 2010, the total output of Chinese liquor reached 8.908 million kiloliters, and the total industrial output value was 279.3 billion yuan, accounting for 53.3% of the total output value of China's drinking wine manufacturing industry. Production and sales volume accounted for about 40% of the world's distilled spirit industry's annual production and sales volume. The liquor market in 2011 can be described as “blowoutâ€. According to statistics, in 2011, the output of liquor in China reached 10.256 million liters, an increase of 30.7% over the same period of last year. It is expected that it will achieve 25% growth in 2012, and the output value will reach 3827.5. 100 million yuan. At the same time, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also clearly stated in the "Twelfth Five-year Development Plan for Food Industry" that by the end of the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, the total output value of the liquor industry will reach 12.3 trillion yuan, an increase. 100%, an average annual increase of 15%.
According to industry analysts, the domestic liquor industry will continue to maintain rigid demand, and the industry's growth will become stronger. In the coming years, liquor will also usher in a wave of development. In particular, the increase in demand for high-end liquor and the increase in the pursuit of healthy consumption will stimulate consumption in the liquor industry. There must be packaging for the goods. In the face of such a large and potential market, printing companies that have been defined as traditional industries can secretly sneer. If they can get involved in this type of business, there will be more development opportunities for the company. What about?
Liquor packaging development
In the era of planned economy, China’s wine market is regulated by the state, and production companies do not need to carry out marketing. Therefore, the outer packaging of products is very simple. Only kraft paper or newspapers can be packaged for sale. After that, it gradually develops to the use of gray cards. Paper, white cardboard box, and printed landscape patterns and simple text. In the mid-1990s, the liquor industry entered the fast-track lane of development, and a number of famous wines quickly emerged. At this time, some liquor companies also realized that packaging, as an important part of products, has become a decisive factor in the market occupation of liquor products. one. Therefore, liquor packaging began to innovate in the shape, structure, gold paper and other materials and gold foil, hit convex, copper carving and other new technology has also been a large number of applications. The rise of foreign wines in China at that time was even more exciting and influential to the Chinese liquor market because of its novel packaging, which prompted it to begin to improve on packaging. Since then, Chinese liquor companies have begun to learn from foreign advanced designs and develop trademarks, packaging, bottle caps, and container designs. From style, content, and color, they try their best to ingenuity in order to attract consumers' attention. At that time, some companies even thought that marketing was a "packaging war," causing the cost of wine and packaging to be "inverted by 37," and many liquor packages showed a trend of upscale atmosphere.
By the year 2000, liquor packaging began to focus on content and anti-counterfeiting, and the competition in the liquor industry began to shift from low-level packaging wars and price wars to high-level brand packaging wars that sought for packaging intension, anti-counterfeiting, and product quality. In the face of the upsurge in the development of high-end liquor products, liquor packaging design began to embrace cultural charm and packaging materials were upgraded again. In terms of printing technology, technologies such as local glazing, oil, colorful, and crystal boxes have begun to be applied and continue to be innovative.
The mystery of culture
Liquor packaging is no longer just a package, and its role has become very broad. In particular, the actual differences between products are getting smaller and smaller, and packaging has become an important means to break the homogeneity. Regardless of whether it is on the television or in the advertisement of white liquor in the print media, we can see that liquor companies generally play cultural cards and conduct marketing through visual images and culture. In this case, the packaging of liquor is the first to bear the burden of culture. Such as our familiar blue and white porcelain Erguotou, blue and white porcelain wine, is to rely on this traditional cultural image of blue and white porcelain to create liquor brand, welcomed by the market.
The use of the culture carried by liquor packaging to make a difference and attract consumers' attention is a popular marketing tool. At the same time, we also found that the more personalized, regional, national, and humane product packaging, the stronger its competitiveness. From this point of view, the packaging design of liquor has evolved from pure, simple product design to the brand information design of the market, business, and marketing. Among these, color has been applied by many designers with its powerful visual impact and has always been the brand color. For example, the Yanghe Blue Classic we often see on television is a typical representative. Color is the strongest element in the package, it conveys emotions. The traditional liquor packaging is based on red, yellow and gold colors. Now it has not been able to leave a strong impression in the minds of consumers. Therefore, some previously uncommonly used colors, such as blue and green, have been respected. Brands such as “Yanghe†and “Living Brewing†stand out from the competition with their distinctive blue and green packaging colors. Among them, "Yanghe Blue Classic" is mainly blue, and its packaging fully reflects the cultural appeal of returning to the sea, and it perfectly integrates with the brand connotation. With this kind of "different stuffing", the packaging is a flowing "live" character on the tender green background, accurately reproduces the core of green culture, and has formed a very strong external characteristics of the product.
The development of printing technology
Liquor packaging carries too much functionality, and its printing process is also relatively complex. Today, liquor packaging generally uses a combination of a variety of printing technologies combined printing, such as offset, gravure, screen printing, flexo and other traditional printing methods, but also use digital printing and other new printing technology. The combination of various processes can fully display the advantages of several printing methods, such as choosing a product with rich offset printing layers, printing spot colors and gold (silver) inks with a single sheet of gravure printing, and special finishing effects with screen printing. , Can make liquor packaging products have a strong impact. In addition to different effects obtained through different printing methods, the post-print finishing is a “killer†for diversification of liquor packaging. At present, the main methods for the finishing of liquor packaging after printing are laminating, hot stamping, embossing, etc. Basically, manual assistance is required.
Anti-counterfeiting is a function that can't be neglected in liquor packaging. The anti-counterfeiting has also penetrated into all aspects of packaging, from design to material selection, printing methods, printing technology, to the effect of finishing, each link may penetrate into the content of security. For example, many liquor packaging companies have chosen to manufacture packaging products using a three-dimensional raster printing method. The packaging is unique and extremely difficult to counterfeit. Sichuan Yibin Wuliangye has many applications and innovations in this regard.
At present, the main anti-counterfeit methods for liquor packaging include four types: anti-counterfeit materials, anti-counterfeiting, anti-counterfeiting, and cost-proof. The material anti-counterfeiting technology mainly uses some special papers and paperboards, such as the use of special processes and equipment in the papermaking process to add watermarks, security threads, fluorescent fibers and other anti-counterfeit labels; information security, such as the use of RFID tags and two-dimensional bar code recognition technology, so that consumption Anyone can inquire about authenticity at any time; the destruction and anti-counterfeiting are mainly in two ways: destruction of the outer packaging structure and bottle breaking and capping; and the cost reduction is through the luxury of packaging and high cost to improve anti-counterfeiting performance, such as printing technology and bottle body manufacturing. Technology fusion, all made with high-precision production lines, makes counterfeiters prohibitive and unprofitable.