Old is New Again

Searching for Identity in a Former Soviet State

By Gregory Grishchenko

Ukraine is rapidly developing its own packaging market. According to Upakovka, the leading Ukrainian packaging magazine, 40% of the country 's 500-million-dollar packaging market opts for paperboard, with corrugated taking about half.

Express is a paperboard packaging producer in Makeevka, a coal mining town in the Donetsk region. The history of Express began during the last years of the USSR when workers of the state-owned coal mine organized a package printing co-op. The mine was about to be closed, creating a pool of work hungry entrepreneurs. The co-op started to buy printing equipment and soon realized that there were no skilled printers available. Despite the lack of experience, Express decided to expand and invest in the state-of-the-art printing and die-cutting equipment focusing on personnel training.

By the year 2000, production picked up and a package designed and manufactured by Express won the prestigious international award in the WorldStar packaging contest. The winning package featured a one-piece paperboard carton with distinctive locks in butterfly or sunflower shape. The carton with sunflower lock was designed and fabricated for Khalva, a syrupy sunflower seed dessert product made by Druzhkovskaya food factory located in small Ukrainian village in Donetsk region.

Bellis Cosmetics is using cardboard packaging in the form of decorated display boxes, providing good product presentation for its line of children's cosmetics. This company that specializes in low cost products, however, selected this elaborate package for its shampoo-cream-gel gift set for kids.

Stiff vodka competition

In present day Ukraine, where capitalism has been taking root for the last 15 years, there are over 100 distilleries and wine producers supplying Ukrainian and Russian markets with old and new vodka brands. However, only a few of them stand out with quality liquor brands that are gaining recognition in the mature markets of Western Europe, the U.S., and Canada.

Ukraine vodka brands have invested heavily in developing their "next generation" bottle designs.

Last year, according to Drinks International magazine, two of Ukraine's vodka brands, Khortytsa and Nemiroff, took ranks #11 and #14 in the magazine's Millionaires Club, which measures the number of cases sold worldwide. Khortytsa is one of the fastest growing vodka brands in the world, starting in 2003 in the city of Zaporizhia and now the largest and the most modern distillery in the country. This vodka is a leader of the Ukrainian liquor market (28%) and is being exported to 45 countries. The brand owner, Evgen Chernyak, spent $55 million to make Khortytsa a bestseller in Eastern Europe.

Located in Vinnytsa region of Ukraine, Nemiroff was launched 12 year ago by Yakov Gribov. After acquiring and modernizing an ordinary distillery (and most likely having famous Smirnoff brand in mind) he simply rewrote the name of the town where the distillery was sited in the Latin alphabet instead of Cyrillic to create the impression among Slavic consumers that the vodka had foreign roots. Easy enough for international consumer to pronounce, the name became the company's international marketing success.

Both companies can afford using top bottle designs supplied by key Western European glassworks like Saint-Gobain or Bormiolli Rocco; however, they add decorating features that reinforce the brand's image as an upscale, truly Ukrainian product.

While the majority of liquors are sold in conventional glass bottles using gravure printed paper labels, a substantial segment of Zlatogor's vodka is packaged in ceramic and glass artistic bottles of various designs. Unique bottle shapes are dedicated to specific vodka brands. The low labor and material costs help to bring the price of such gift packages to around five to six dollars at retail.

Zlatogor has procured domestic ceramics and glass manufacturers who combine tradition and modern technology to produce distinguished designs for clay and glass blown bottles. According to a marketing study conducted by Zlatogor, the artistic ceramic and glass bottle design provides a quality look to the product and helps to increase the sales of the company's liquors packaged in regular glass bottles.

Slinging cakes and arrows

During the Soviet times, sweets were one of the Ukraine's famous food products that were widely known across the USSR. Ukraine's candy industry was created by Soviet planners that placed confectionary factories in the region that provided more than a quarter of all Soviet agricultural output thanks to good climate and fertile "chernozem" black soil. According to the Ukrainian Trade Association Ukrkonditer, currently over 40 candy producers operate in the country, with company sizes ranging from a dozen employees to a few thousand strong.

One of the most known candy brands in Ukraine is Strela (Arrow). This candy has a very distinctive shape, taste, and structure with the base as a metal cone made from a round piece of foil. The candy is filled with a brandy-flavored cream covered with a thin layer of chocolate on the top.

Strela was originated in Ukraine during Soviet times and since the trademark belonged to the former USSR, the candy currently is being produced in many factories across Ukraine and Belarus. The recipe and shape of Strela candy is quite identical from each factory; however, the individual box designs may vary. The Vinnitsa Confectionery Factory is one of the top five candy plants in Ukraine and the largest producer of Strela by volume. This brand is also manufactured in Kharkiv, Chernigiv, Poltava, and Odessa.

The dessert cake named Kyivsky torte is still a centerpiece on the holiday table in Ukraine. The cake has become one of the symbols of the country's capital city, especially by its brand name and package. The Kyivsky torte consists of biscuit layers containing ground hazelnuts and separated by butter cream filling. The cake is sold in a uniquely patterned round box with a chestnut leaf image printed on top.

The recipe for the famous cake was created at a Karl Marx confectionery factory in Kyiv in 1956 by Konstantin Petrenko, the foreman of the biscuit shop. This cake became the city's trademark, and in Soviet times the factory produced one ton per day with the demand exceeded supply for many years to come. Numerous candy factories in Ukraine and Russia have tried to copy the recipe as well as the package; however, the original producer stays ahead of competition holding on to quality ingredients and technology.

Let's Talk About Lex

The carton for premium vodka Lex has a dark blue suede-like paperboard surface accented with silver embossing. The triangular window is off-white speckled parchment, and the package parchment overwrap has silvery "Nemiroff Lex" brand watermarks. The bottle (on page 39) leaves a distinctive high-end impression, designed by a European supplier and manufactured by the Ukrainian company Lvivkartonoplast.