Opal Specialty Packaging, in partnership with De Bortoli Wines, has developed an innovative and unique design solution for De Bortoli’s 2021 Wine Advent Calendar.

Each year, in celebration of the festive season, De Bortoli launches its sell-out Advent Calendar, which showcases a range of red, white, sparkling, and rosé wines featured in a specially designed Advent Calendar box.

Taking inspiration from the look of a jovial Christmas jumper, the brief to Opal was to create a range of different designs for the Advent Calendar boxes. Working with De Bortoli, the brief evolved to consider how the designs could be expanded using the innovative technology in Opal’s EFI Nozomi 18000C digital press.

After exploring a range of possibilities, the creative team at De Bortoli and the team at Opal settled on a combination of 16 specific Pantone colours and 12 different graphic objects in the form of Christmas “decorations,” to deliver thousands of individualised boxes.

Each box has a unique mix of colours and decorations appearing in different areas on the packaging to ensure that no two boxes are the same.

Opal said the benefits of digitally printed packaging include shorter run lengths and minimal set up costs.

Opal said De Bortoli is the first of its customers to take advantage of “mass versioning” capabilities, which digital printing can deliver.

Opal Specialty Packaging group general manager Andrew Russo said the company is committed to innovation.

“Our team strives to identify ways to bring added value for our customers, which is core to our market offering,” Russo said.

Each individually designed box contains a selection of 24 piccolos with a mix of 12 different De Bortoli wines. Once used, the Advent Calendar box can be recycled via kerbside recycling collection or through local cardboard recyclers.