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<pre>Hi Nico,

I'm going to make the heroic presumption that the 3 months delay in
getting the labels printed is not a stalling tactic from your
joint-venture partners. It's probably also worth asking the question
whether the delay is a shipping problem because 3 months delay takes
you to end-August production which is holiday time :-)

I'm also going to presume you are using a commercial printer who
specialises in making labels to be used in high speed production
lines. They know what weight paper and adhesives need to be used.

The problem at the Italian end may be due to the design rather than
printing. You may be better off sending the printer the graphics
(full colour, electronic separations) that they can proof and test
for you. That involves (usually) doing the work in Photoshop or Quark
Express and sending printer ready Adobe Acrobat files to the printer,
specifying the colours very precisely and the required paper weight.
They may be concerned that you are an overseas customer who will be
difficult to deal with if a problem emerges.

It is very important to know which machinery they are using for
bottling and labelling. Are they using high-speed lines with
integrated fillers and labellers? Are the using one bottling line
with multiple labellers? Are they using a small olive grove version?
Are they contract packaging? Lots of questions there!

If you know the machinery, I'd check if there's a US representative
and talk to them about the label requirements. They should be able to
help, if they exist.

Basically, the variations are endless here. We could continue this
discussion off-line if the details are too sensitive.

Oh, one more thing. have you thought of bringing small volumes of the
bottles in "clean skin" and labelling in the US? Don't know whether
that's allowed in the US but it may speed up the delivery for you and
allow more time to resolve the printer problem in Italy.

Regards,
Lambros Karavis.

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Karavis & Associates Phone: (+61) 414 997 997
850 Buffalo-Stony Creek Rd Fax/Voice Mail:
(+61) 3 9923 6999
Stony Creek VIC 3957 eMail: lkaravis@...
Australia
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