From the natural spring water, select grains of malted barley and hops used in its recipe to the shimmering, gold-foil, maple-leaf pattern on its packaging, new Confederation Ale from The Robert Simpson Brewing Co., Ltd., (Barrie, Ontario), pays homage to Canada and to the "spirit of the country's appreciation for fine beers." Named after Canada's 1867 celebration of independence and unity, Confederation Ale was launched in December 2004 in Ontario and has since taken home honors for both the beverage and its packaging. "In fact," says Peter Chiodo, Jr., president of Robert Simpson, "the packaging is the pinnacle of the product because to differentiate ourselves as a new brand in a really hyper-competitive market, we have to be able to stand out."

Giving the premium, microbrewery ale the desired shelf presence is a gorgeously printed, foil-laminated, corrugated carton from Toronto-based Smurfit-Image Pac, a div. of Smurfit-MBI (www.smurfit-mbi.com). Graphics for Confederation Ale's labels and cartons were designed by Zimmerman Rose Columbus, Inc. (www.zrcinc.com), also of Barrie, which incorporated the Canadiana theme throughout using a pattern of overlapping maple leaves, along with line art of 19th-century brewmasters.

In development for about 18 months, the packaging's structure, materials and graphics display a painstaking attention to detail. "I think I spent four days of my life just tweaking the design of the box hand holes," jokes Chiodo.

One of three Image Pac facilities established in the early 1990s, Smurfit-Image Pac Ontario converts corrugated consumer packaging and point-of-purchase displays. The plant, which manufactures preprint, postprint and litho-laminated containers, has an annual capacity of 46,000 tons. Originally a producer of only brown-box shipping containers, the division has invested nearly $20 million over the past several years to transform itself into a producer of high-end specialty packaging.

"Previously, we had some multicolor equipment in our facility, but we invested in more state-of-the-art equipment because our clients were asking for greater impact from a retail point of view," explains Wally Petrac, manager of corporate marketing and design for Smurfit-MBI. "Everyone on our plant floor, from our press operators on up, understands that ultimately what we're producing is going to be on a retail shelf in a retail environment, so consistency and quality are critical."

Among the plant's major equipment: A 300-ft-long, 87-in. corrugator from BHS Corrugated (www.bhscorrugated.de) that can produces E-, B-, C-, EC- and EB-flute corrugated sheet, and a 63-in. Bobst Asitrade single-face laminator (www.bobstgroup.com), producing B-, E- and M-flute. While preprinted flexo and litho labels are done by outside sources, Smurfit-Image Pac provides multicolor flexo-postprint services via a 7-color, 50 × 80-in. Bobst Masterflex 203-A matic press and a 48 × 87-in., 5-color Rotaflexo 2000 press from Cuir CCM S.A. (www.cuir.com).

Unusual for Smurfit-Image Pac, explains Petrac and sales manager W. Jeff Abbott, are the variety of complementary services provided by the division letting it be "a one-stop shop" for specialty retail corrugated. The kraft and white rollstock materials used to produce the corrugated sheets are custom-made by Smurfit's mills in the US and Canada, while prepress work—including artwork, color separations and proofs—is done in-house by the company's Image Pac Graphics division at its design centers in Vancouver and Toronto.

"For the client's benefit, we try and control as much as we can here, so that if there is any disruption in the manufacturing process, we can react as quickly as possible; we don't have to rely on outside suppliers," says Abbott.

In the case of the Simpson beer carton, Smurfit-Image Pac's involvement ran the gamut from helping to finalize Zimmerman's graphic design to developing the carton's unique structure. Designed in both six- and 12-pack sizes, the Confederation Ale carton is constructed of 29 ECT E-flute corrugated, with a kraft inside liner and a litho-laminated label.

As Zimmerman neared the end of the design process for the carton's artwork, the designer, along with Smurfit-Image Pac and Annan & Bird Lithographers (www.annan-bird.com), which supplies most of the litho-printed labels for Smurfit-Image Pac, consulted to ensure that the graphics could be reproduced. Relates John Bird, vp of operations for Annan & Bird, "The biggest challenge [of this project] was to come up with graphics that would achieve the results they were looking for but still be reproducible on press."

According to Chiodo, much trial and error was involved in the selection of materials, inks and colors to get the best "reaction." The final label is a silver, metallized polyester film laminated to a 10-pt board. The film is printed in a 150-line screen with UV inks in opaque white, three process colors and two spot colors, plus a spot-UV coating on a 6-color Rapida 162a press from KBA North America (www.kba-print.de) equipped with an interdeck UV dryer.

The litho label is supplied to Smurfit-Image Pac as a sheet that is fed into the Asitrade laminator, where it is adhered to a single-face corrugated board, as the board and flute are constructed. According to Petrac, the use of the single-face laminator provides another advantage for clients such as Simpson, because it eliminates a step in the converting process. "The difference between single-face laminating and litho laminating is that with litho laminating, you need an outside liner. The way that we do it, the thicker label becomes the outside of the carton, so we're really eliminating one liner," he explains. "It tends to be a higher-speed process and a more accurate way of laminating a litho label."

Once the label is laminated to the board, the material is cut into sheets and loaded onto a Bobst SPO 160-S Autoplaten® automatic diecutting press, equipped with a Dynaload automatic loader and a Dynabreak that prebreaks the nicked cartons to keep productivity high. Separated carton blanks are then fed into a Bobst Post 3115 Matic gluer that adds a strip of glue along the outside of the manufacturer's joint, curing the glue as the blank moves through the machine's mid-section.

According to Chiodo, the meticulous care taken in the design and execution of Robert Simpson's debut ale was well worth the effort. "Confederation Ale is the most expensive beer made in Ontario. So when it came to packaging, we had a little more of a margin to work with. This has allowed us to have an unbelievable presence in the market, and we are enjoying the success from the retail side for sure."

Also speeding project turnaround, Smurfit-Image Pac operates its own steel-rule platen-die department to manufacture job-specific dies for the diecutting machines on-site. Finally, it retains a one-third ownership in SCI Canada (www.flexoprint.com), which supplies preprint customers with multicolor, flexo-printed rollstock for conversion to corrugated containers at Smurfit-Image Pac.

"If we damage a flexo plate during printing, we just make another one. We don't have to worry about a trade shop down the street supplying it to us in a timely manner."

This article originally appeared in Packaging Digest (May 2006).