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Labeler gives new life to wine bottles

A single-head, pressure-sensitive labeler for front and back labels provides a small Texas winery with quick set-up and clean-up time and saves $10ꯠ, too.

Buena Vida's redesigned pressure-sensitive label (above) has a cleaner look than its previous glue-applied label. The winery's n
Buena Vida's redesigned pressure-sensitive label (above) has a cleaner look than its previous glue-applied label. The winery's n

For Springtown, TX, winery La Buena Vida, or “The Good Life,” life is indeed good. The small winery switched to pressure-sensitive labels for its glass wine bottles and conducted a complete label redesign, as well. An unusual p-s labeler installed in May completes the packaging upgrade.

Twenty-seven years ago, La Buena Vida’s life began as a hobby for owner Dr. Bobby Smith, a family practice physician. Now the winery has grown to a bona fide business, employing 11 people and shipping 8ꯠ to 10ꯠ cases/yr to stores all over Texas.

For 15 years, La Buena Vida used a glue labeler to apply its paper labels, but Smith felt the finished package was not as appealing as it could be. He says the glue-applied labels wrinkled and bubbled and did not respond well to moisture. Plus, the previous machine’s set-up and clean-up times were too time-consuming, especially because Buena Vida runs the machine only about 30 days/yr.

“It took two to three hours to get [the former labeler] running and three to four hours to clean it up when you were finished,” Smith recalls. “One of the lowliest assignments in the winery was cleaning the labeling machine. But it was always the most important because if you left it messed up, you couldn’t use it the next time around.”

Simpler system

Smith knew that when it came time to buy a new labeler, he wanted a company close to home. Lord Label (Arlington, TX) is near the winery’s Springtown location. “Lord Label met our needs better than anyone else, and one of those needs is that [the supplier] is local,” says Camille McBee, marketing director at La Buena Vida.

She says the proximity of the supplier is especially important if the machine needs some maintenance. “Dr. Smith is a very hands-on person. He fixes most everything that goes wrong around here. It impressed him that if he needed a part, he could go down the street and get it.”

Since Lord Label’s Model 1-CL labeler was installed in May, La Buena Vida has done four bottlings, all without a hitch. Smith says he’s delighted with how easy the machine is to operate. “You set up this machine, make some minor adjustments and it takes off,” he says. “At the end of the day, you shut it off and put your remaining labels away. It’s a 10-minute shutdown process. That’s important for the morale of the troops,” he adds.

What makes this labeler so unusual is that with a single labeling head, the machine applies both front and back labels in proper position on a single bottle from a single label web. “This is the first time we have ever built a machine to apply front and back labels with a single labeling head,” says Luther Roberts, customer service manager at Lord Label. In essence, this is an automated, intermittent-motion labeler that can apply both front and back labels to each bottle at speeds up to about 40 bpm, Roberts says.

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