Ever since 1875, when the Bass red triangle became the first registered trademark, brewers have recognised the importance of on beer bottle branding, and now the latest printing technologies are being harnessed to achieve the best packaging impact for today's brewers.

Beer bottle labels play a major role in ensuring that beer packaging has strong impact at the point of sale. Packaging technology is advancing dramatically, with innovations in the printing, production and application of beer labels, and a move away from the traditional wet glue labels to high impact self adhesive labels.

Recent developments in print technology have helped improve the aesthetic quality of self adhesive labels. High-end print techniques such as foils, special links and MetalFX provide a visually attractive label, able to fulfil brewer's stringent brand values.

The economics of self adhesives have also been transformed with specialist label and packaging printers now available to produce high quality labels in economic short runs.

Traditional wet glue labels are applied by using adhesive on the bottling line. As they need to sit on the bottling line in a box or magazine each made specifically for a single label size and format, this process tends to limit the range of labels available.

By contrast, self adhesive label are pre-coated with adhesive and applied to bottles from a carrierweb. The process is cleaner, involves less complex machinery and can quickly be adapted to all label sizes and formats.

Traditional wet glue labels may suffer from the problems of drying out, tearing or fall off before they reach the customer. The technical specification of self adhesive materials can be tailored to ensure that each label type is fir for its purpose. By using appropriate adhesives, self adhesive labels can even be applied to web bottles on the line.

Such innovations ensure that labels remain in prime condition up to the point of sale.