participated to the “Unified Wine & Grape Symposium”, the largest wine & grape industry trade show in North America, which was held Jan. 28-30 in Sacramento (California).
The show was the opportunity to announce the plans to install a new screw cap plant with enhanced decoration capabilities, located at 2300 S. Watney Way in Fairfield.
“Because the market is growing for screw caps in the United States, especially in California, we decided to invest in local production,” said Alessandro Bocchio, General Manager of Guala Closures North America.
The relocation to an 11,000-square-foot plant and warehouse in Fairfield allows for the installation of new small-run technology for Guala Closures as well as continued storage services for clients that can’t purchase all of a production run at a time. Italy-based Guala Closures’ R&D development center worked with an undisclosed Italian manufacturer to develop a system that allows the application of colors, logos and other artwork to screw caps in a way said to be different from today’s conventional methods of offset printing, spray-painting and embossing.
Runs on the equipment can be as small as a few thousand caps. By comparison, minimum orders from Guala Closures’ nearest plant, located in Mexico, are for 100,000 closures.
“We have received a lot of inquiries from small wineries that want their own logo and color but once we tell them the quantities they need to buy, they say they can’t buy a 10-year supply,” Mr. Bocchio said.
For at least the next couple of years, until any expansion of the Fairfield plant is undertaken, large-scale production U.S. wine orders will continue to come from Mexico. Caps for high-pressure sparkling wine, called Viiva and developed with O-I, will continue to come from Australia. Savin Premium smooth-sided caps with skirt were announced from the South Aftrica plant in September, joining a WAK cap in the portfolio that also mimics the look of a conventional foil or plastic capsule over a bottle top.