Saxon Packaging Produce Packaging For SIBA Independent Beer Awards

At Saxon Packaging, we’ve been proud silver members of SIBA for more than 6 years and are always doing whatever we can to support SIBA and its members. We are specialists in producing beer packaging to meet almost any requirement, including beer carry packs, gift packaging, and fridge packs. When Jenna Barningham, Membership Services at SIBA, reached out to us recently for help with their new Bottle and Can Competition, we couldn’t wait to get involved.

Earlier in the year, we were an official beer box partner for SIBA’s BeerX 2021 event, so when we were offered first refusal for this latest sponsorship, we jumped at the opportunity. We take great pride in supporting SIBA and its members, and doing our part for the SIBA community.

SIBA Bottle And Can Competition 2021

 

SIBA are the Society of Independent Brewers Association and they have more than 800 brewer members in their ranks. The organisation runs various events and awards throughout the year, for everything from casks & kegs, to bottled and canned beers.

In previous years, SIBA have hosted regional beer awards, with winners going forward to the national final at the much-loved BeerX event. During the Coronavirus pandemic, all regional and national beer awards were forced to come to a halt.

While everyone was stuck at home in 2020, sales of canned and bottled beers direct to consumers spiked massively, and SIBA wanted to celebrate this with virtual awards. In 2020, they hosted the Digital Beer Awards which was a great success, and last year, BeerX took place online in March.

After the success of these online awards, SIBA hosted the Bottle and Can Competition 2021 in the last week of November.

All brewers were invited to send in their beers anonymously, and SIBA distributed them to the judges in specialist judging beer boxes. This is where Saxon Packaging got involved by providing specialist beer carry packs (12x500ml Bottle Carry Packs) for the competition

Bespoke Beer Packaging From Saxon

SIBA needed to provide all the judges with anonymised boxes of beers, which could be easily shipped and keep the products safe during transit. They required 300 beer carry packs, each fitting 12 bottles or canned beers securely. Our team at Saxon Packaging were happy to accept the challenge and quickly got to work to create the ideal beer packaging solution.

The structural design of the boxes was created by our internal design team, and the material we chose for the packaging was 150WTK/150T E Flute. We used our Kirby Printer Slotter machine to print the beer boxes using the flexo print process and subsequently die-cut them using our Casemaker machine.

 

The biggest challenge for this project came with the artwork. There is a skill to creating artwork for flexo printed packaging as there must be a 3mm distance between adjoining colours. Artwork files require careful checking prior to print, and for this project, it was our Technical & Design Manager Ben Watson and Print & Artwork Coordinator Sam Rowe, who had the challenging task of scrutinising the files.

We went through a few variations of the artwork before it could finally be approved for print.

In addition to the artwork challenges, we also had to work to a very tight deadline for this project. The beer boxes had to be delivered to Roosters Brewery with plenty of time for the beers to be packaged and sent to judges before the Bottle and Can Competition kicked off.

Our team achieved the tight deadline and created beer packaging which was perfect for the task at hand.

Supporting The SIBA Community

We worked on this project, as we are always happy to support SIBA and our fellow members. Our team is passionate about getting involved with community projects and finding solutions to all kinds of packaging challenges. The SIBA Community is one we are very proud to be a part of and being able to support the association and all its members is something we all enjoy.

Over our 6 year membership with SIBA, we have helped many brewery members create packaging which perfectly suits their requirements. By supporting events such as BeerX and the Bottle and Can Competition, we are able to help SIBA get involved with its members and host these important projects.

With competitions like this one, local breweries are able to showcase their products and reach new achievements, and that is something we are so proud to be a part of.

For more information or to discuss your beer packaging requirements, contact our team today.