The manufacturing process
Manufacturing ScrewCapps for wine is a five-part process requiring high levels of precision and technical expertise. While the caps themselves are relatively low value items, they play a crucial role in wine protection and branding – therefore the guarding of your investment. We place great emphasis on the following manufacturing processes to ensure your wines are enjoyed just as the winemaker intended – and for you to have access to unrivalled printing opportunities.

Sheet Printing – An Aluminium sheet of specific hardness and thickness is coated underneath and decorated above. This serves the dual purpose of providing a protected surface with the exact amount of surface friction required for forming. Typically the print on the top face of the screw cap is applied to the sheet with the side decoration to follow after forming.

Slitting – Technically a fairly simple process, we slit the printed sheets in two and trim the sides. The process itself is a critical quality control point as we undertake a 100% visual inspection of the printed sheet. The trimming process ensures exact registration of the top print on the caps.

Draw and Re-draw – The first and second draw form the individual caps from the sheet. The 1st draw lubricates the sheet with a food-grade oil, cuts out the circular discs which form each cap, and presses them into a ‘cup’ shape. These ‘cups’ are then fed into the 2nd draw (or re-draw) press where they are pressed twice to form the ‘deep drawn’ 30x60mm closure. The second draw press also trims the edge of the cap to provide a ScrewCapp of a specific length with a clean and consistent edge. The final part of the forming process is to pass the caps through an oven to remove the lubricant that was applied to assist the forming.

Side Decoration – Side decoration can be a combination of lacquer, silk screen print and offset print. Lacquer is applied as an all over side print of a single colour. This is where we apply the unique Super Matt black which provides outstanding contrast for gloss and metallic silk screened images. Silk screen can apply up to two colours. Typically gold, silver, white and spot varnishes are used to provide vivid contrast to the lacquered background. The silk screened image/text does not provide the same exacting registration levels as offset printing, however, it provides graphics which ‘sit up’ on top of the background - providing excellent visual appeal. Offset side printing can produce up to 6 colours in a single pass (one background lacquer plus a five colour print station) with extremely tight tolerances and great depth of colour. Clever use of matt and gloss varnishes on your ScrewCapp can also dramatically add to shelf appeal and branding. DGS manufacture lacquer, silk screen and offset printing machinery for screw caps as they were not satisfied with the depth of colour and operational efficiency of the machinery on the market.

Rolling & Wadding - The final, and functionally most important process of ScrewCapp manufacturing. This is where the decorated caps have the knurling (vertical rib pattern) applied around the cap to improve its strength and ease of gripping, the slots and bridges are cut into the cap (where the cap will break off when opening), and the wadding is inserted. The insertion of the wadding is critical to wine preservation and receives special attention in our manufacturing process. Tin saran wadding must be inserted with the tin side facing towards the wine and the wadding itself must have no cuts, tears or folds - to ensure a complete seal is achieved over the bottle when the cap is finally applied. A camera installed on the final stage of the production process provides a 100% quality inspection of the wadding to ensure that it is applied correctly and has no defections which will prevent the wine being sealed properly.