More than 50 years ago, when Novamex created its line of natural fruit-extract soft drinks for the Mexican market, it launched them in a 400-mL glass bottle that hit store shelves in 1950, becoming the first national brand of Mexican soft drinks. Jarritos has since established a market for Mexican products and is now available in Hispanic markets across the U.S., ensuring its status as a key Mexican soft drink brand here. The soda line of 10 fruit flavors is the largest export soft drink from Mexico to the U.S. The Jarritos brand has grown at close to 20 percent per year in the U.S. marketplace over the past five years. Now, Novamex is modernizing the Jarritos brand with a fresh new bottle label, with the help of Spear, Inc. (www.spearsystem.com).

Novamex recently decided to change the image of the nostalgic Mexican/Hispanic brand in order to compete in today's crowded, nonalcoholic drinks market. Historically the embossed flint Jarritos bottle displayed a two- to three-color applied ceramic labeling (ACL) decoration, which was later followed by a flexo-printed roll-form label for many years. With help from Spear to update the brand's image using its SpearSystem, Jarritos is taking a new direction with clear film pressure-sensitive labels. Spear screen-prints the film labels in four colors on the front and two colors on the back. Novamex also updated the bottle shape with a more contemporary look to ensure easy application for the new p-s labels, and continue the modern theme. Due to the flexibility of p-s label decoration and their dramatic appearances, the company says it will continue to grow Jarritos aggressively as an international Hispanic soda brand. Novamex says it plans to export the drink to Canada, Spain and other European countries throughout 2008.