Here’s the current status and a look towards the future

After more than a year of meetings in France and Italy, we are pleased to announce the incorporation of Les Bouchages Delage into the Tapì Group.

Recognised as the leader in closure production for premium alcoholic drinks, and partner to the biggest producers of Cognac and other spirits globally, there were many interested parties including some large multinational groups that operate in the closure sector. For this reason, we can say that we are not only pleased to have chosen them as our partner, but we’re also pleased that they chose us, considering the other compelling potential collaborators.

Uniting Tapì and Delage into one Group we will strengthen our business

The French-Italian pairing has been received with great enthusiasm on both sides. And because of this, I view the Tapì-Delage Group as the combination of common values from their respective skill sets, rather than as an actual acquisition. For me, it’s a source of pride to see there’s already strong engagement and willingness to share synergies and competences between people in both organisations.

Les Bouchages Delage is an organisation with great skills and know-how in our reference market. We both sell high-quality products with complementary commercial offerings and product ranges that integrate well.

The specialist know-how about plastic and aluminium materials along with the supply and production of wood from Tapì is being integrated with Delage’s production phases for metallised plastics and metalworking, as well as their in-depth knowledge of cork.

So, today we have become the Group with the most complete portfolio available in the closure market that’s focussed on premium and super-premium spirits.

Both brands – Tapì and Les Bouchages Delage – have always been associated with cutting-edge technology and in-depth design research. And they can expect to achieve an excellent position in the market, both in terms of reputation and brand strength, internationally.

More specifically, the Tapì brand has always been recognised for its design and innovation, while the Delage brand occupies a traditional position, with a clear focus on the development of top-quality products.

I’m certain that in uniting Tapì and Delage into one Group we will strengthen our business and market objectives. On one hand, it drives the consolidation of both brands in the markets where they operate. And on the other, we can win new markets by converging the meeting point between demand and offering in the most holistic and effective way.

This article appears in our printed magazine, TapInk.

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Today the entire packaging industry has a huge responsibility in helping to safeguard the planet from an excess of plastic and waste. Here’s what’s changing.

Despite the Covid-19 health crisis slowing the over-exploitation of natural resources, 22 August 2020 still marked Earth Overshoot Day – the day, more than three weeks later than in 2019, on which the earth’s natural resources for the year were exhausted. At the current rate, we would in effect require 1.6 planets to satisfy our needs.

Many consumers are increasingly concerned about our negative impact on the planet. Excessive carbon emissions, climate change, and the huge quantity of plastic polluting our seas and oceans are the main (but not the only) issues that humankind has been grappling with in recent years.

A lot of these problems arise from the consumer and capitalist culture we are accustomed to, which feeds our obsession for buying goods that are not always environmentally friendly.

Fast fashion and electronics are two particularly guilty industries. Consumers in the United Kingdom, for example, buy more new clothes than anywhere else in Europe, with an estimated 23 million items going to landfill in 2017.

Although the beverage world has not been one of the industries in the firing line, for years it has been searching for more sustainable solutions. And at Tapì, we also try to make our own contribution. We invest in research and trial new technologies and production processes, which help us to optimize workflows and reduce waste. It also helps us create sustainable closures from plant-based raw materials or from reusing waste material. We wanted to give a name to our corporate best practices and activities linked to sustainability, all of which form part of Tapì’s DNA: we called it LEI – Low Environmental Impact.

The role of the consumer in the sustainability era

When sustainability became an element of added value for consumers, a number of companies decided to follow the trend by moving to green packaging. Environmentally friendly packaging is now no longer merely a trend – it’s a necessity for humankind and the planet.

Moreover, recent research shows that sustainable packaging is one of the main factors influencing buying decisions. Around 80% of consumers – and millennials above all – say they are happy to spend more money buying products from companies that respect ethical and sustainable principles.

How can packaging design help combat climate change and waste?

The entire packaging industry has been through significant change over the past 20 years as focus has shifted towards ease of use for the end consumer, design, and practicality.

Previously, branding and style were the only challenges facing packaging designers. Now, other factors such as efficiency and greenness have come into play. We therefore feel confident stating that there is a shared consciousness throughout the beverage supply chain – from producers to designers, right up to the client/consumer.

For companies specializing in packaging production, this means greater innovation and a move away from one-size-fits-all solutions towards custom packaging designed with – and for – clients on an individual basis. It also means greater potential for special products, which buyers could be prepared to pay more for.

But how exactly can packaging designers help combat climate change and an excess of plastic waste? Let’s find out.

Consider the packaging design “Rs”

Until recently, packaging was mainly made from largely unsustainable elements. In recent years, however, the sustainable Rs model has gained ground. This green concept sums up our three constantly evolving basic principles: Reduce, Reuse e Recycle, the aim of which is to raise awareness, prevent waste, and conserve natural resources.

At Tapì over the past few years we have combined this philosophy with improvements to our production processes and the design of new sustainable closures, helping the brands that use them to best express their values.

Analyze the real lifecycle of packaging materials

Analyzing the packaging lifecycle is a genuine issue as different forms of packaging can make it difficult to assess the real environmental impact.

As an example, let’s take an aluminium can and compare it with a glass bottle. Aluminium consumes more energy when it is produced but is very efficient to recycle. At the same time, glass requires less energy to produce but has to be melted in order for it to be recycled. However, simply washing and reusing the bottle results in greater energy efficiency than recycling the can.

Focus on regulatory drivers

Regulation remains supportive and some countries are promoting, or have implemented, guidelines that will have a direct or indirect impact on packaging choices – from recycling to reducing carbon footprints.

These incentives all aim to achieve greater progress in reducing waste, and improving products’ longevity and the end consumer’s experience. In short, less waste means fewer costs for producers and the environment.

In Conclusion

Overall, the packaging industry is undergoing significant positive change and designers are trialling increasingly innovative measures to satisfy the demands of a constantly evolving market (and world).

At Tapì too, we are always seeking out new sustainable solutions for the premium and super-premium beverage market. For more information, visit the sustainability section of our website.

The global beverage market has changed a great deal in recent years. Products have changed – for example, vodka used to be very successful in the past but is now experiencing a slow down. At the same time, there are products that are undergoing an exponential growth curve in sales. Examples of these include gin and tequila, and some other products that have reached record sales while threatened by huge taxes, just as Cognac with the Trump administration.

Whisky and Bourbon are going very well. Some experts have declared the latter could be the spirit to see a major up turn in the coming year.

All these statistics are directly affected by millennials’ preference for craft distilleries and for their type of consumption in general.

So far, you could say that there’s a global desire to consume alcohol and spirits in a different way than in the past, particularly for western consumers. They prefer well-made products, with good-quality raw materials and made in a traditional or pseudo-traditional way.

Today, craft distilleries have managed to profit from market-share that until now was occupied by the giants of the beverage world. This trend has forced everyone, big and small, to rethink not only their products, but also and more importantly, their packaging.

Now more than ever, packaging needs to be able to communicate a product’s quality and authenticity.In the spirits market, especially, there has been an ever more marked focus on the choice of closure. This has moved from being an almost unnoticed feature to becoming a genuine decorative accessory, an integral part of packaging and increasingly faithful to the brand’s values.

The use of packaging – and closures – as a genuine communication tool is a trend that’s more or less consistent across the globe. And to meet this new demand, we, at Tapì, are moving forwards on a number of fronts.

For example, Mexico and the United States are highly strategic markets for us. Tequila has experienced huge growth in recent years and there’s great potential in the mezcal world as well.

The US is strategic for different reasons. One of these is the success of Bourbon and craft distilleries, as mentioned earlier, since it’s important to be promptwith deliveries and reactive with local services when supplying this type of business.

France remains a key country for our business, due to Cognac, which is a highly significant product for us, considering the Group’s revenue and its positioning towards this specific niche market. However, we can also rely on some excellent results from other products, such as French whisky, gin, rum, vodka and other spirits, but also from products in the perfume, cosmetic, condiments and soon artisan beer industries.

Another strategic market for the Group is Scotland, of course. It offers enormous development potential for the whole company. Alongside this we continue to work with some traditional markets, such as Italy, Germany, Spain, Great Britain, as well as Central and South America, where we are attentively watching the possible boom on premium and super premium cachaça.

In recent years, we have noticed that East Asia and India are seeing growth in terms of spirits production, which explains our push to find potential new customers in this territory.

Think globally, act locally.

This is what our customers are increasingly demanding of us and the slogan could be used to encapsulate my role as Global Strategic Account Manager.

Being global and offering a robust contingency plan is required, but at the same time a local service is also necessary, suited to the various details of the different markets.

My work implies a certain ability to negotiate with contacts worldwide without overlooking or “offending” local contacts who are key both as purchasers and in packaging development. This entails diplomacy in my relationships with customers and adopting different ways of working.

For example, I would say I need to work across time zones, considering where my customers live and, I need to travel often. It’s useful to know how to communicate in various languages, other than in my native language, French. Obviously English and also Italian are useful for internal communications and with some key customers, as well as Spanish for the same reasons. And no less important is the need to know how to work in a team and the ability to meet round a table in different company departments, such as General Management, Sales, Marketing, Purchasing, R&D, Production, Quality, Administrationand so on.

You can’t bring in a deal for 80 million closures without working as a team. It’s impossible. And it’s perhaps the most interesting part of this new role.

I’m lucky to work with fantastic colleagues, who have incredible skills. I’m convinced that great success is even more enjoyable when it’s done through teamwork.

This article appears in our printed magazine, TapInk.

Request yours to keep up to date with the world of Tapì.

LEI – Low Environmental Impact – is the acronym that provides a simple definition of Tapì’s corporate mission: to contribute to reducing its environmental impact and, as a result, caring for the Planet.

LEI, is understood as being the personification of Mother Earth, she who looks after the world and teaches us to respect the environment in which we live.

LEI was devised to give a clear identity to company projects, product ranges, technologies, production processes and best practices that we can define as sustainable, or rather, designed and developed to have as little impact as possible on the environment.

Green design, transparency, customer satisfaction and sustainability: these are the values at the heart of Tapì’s vision for the present and future.

For the last 20 years, we have been committed to guaranteeing production methods, supply chains and machining processes for materials that are as sustainable as possible, adopting alternative and renewable energy sources and continually investing in research and innovation. Nowadays, we design and manufacture sustainable closures with a low environmental impact in line with the green-design demands from our markets.

One of these is NEOS, an innovative technology capable of reducing the carbon footprint of products by using bioplastics from renewable sources, which allow us to produce eco-sustainable closures while the technical performance remains unaltered.

Another one is Abor: the innovative production process used to manufacture closures for the spirits industry by using the distillation waste from our own customers, re-using raw materials that would otherwise by disposed of and creating a packaging element capable of telling the story of the product it is sealing.

Still with the concept of recycling, we also launched T-Cask, a process to recover wood from the barrels used to age products that have reached the end of their life cycle. This gives us the opportunity to produce craft closures with a green spirit.

We also devised a correct recycling for components with Duo, a closure with head and stem that can be manually dismantled. This laid the foundations for a hybrid closure solution known as Pure, an alternative to the everyday solutions in plastic or cork, and made up of a combination of bioplastics generated from renewable sources – NEOS – and sterilised micro granules of natural cork, held together without the use of polyurethane glues.

This, and much more, is LEI, a kind of return to one’s roots, where respect for the natural and environmental elements was at the base of any action carried out by humankind. Similarly inspired, we too at Tapì are today working towards a more sustainable company organisation, with constant focus on the demands and requirements of our employees, co-workers and customers, with a view to proposing product and service solutions capable of satisfying our market, while protecting our Planet.

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