Versatility the key to success

Text: Klemens Ehrlitzer
Photos: Klemens Ehrlitzer, UPM

The label industry has a huge amount of innovative potential for mastering upcoming challenges.

Anyone who wants to gauge the importance of labels should go to a supermarket and imagine what it would be like if you took all the labels away. However, the use of labels goes far beyond simply decorating products and identifying goods. In particular, self-adhesive labels can be found in all areas of everyday life to an almost overwhelming extent. It is therefore hardly surprising that the adhesive label industry has enjoyed above average growth over recent years.

At the start of March 2010, around 200 specialists from the label sector met at a technical seminar organised by the international organisation FINAT. It focused on how added value can be generated with self-adhesive labels. The event was also a great opportunity to talk with three recognised experts about the current challenges and future prospects of the industry. Participants agree that the industry sector has the required resources to continue its success in future years.

Mike Fairley
Andrea Vimercati
Noel Mitchell

Versatility an important advantage

As Mike Fairley explains, one of the industry's decisive success factors is the versatility of self-adhesive labels. As the founder of "Labels & Labeling" magazine and the author of technical books, he has been working with this technology for more than 30 years.

"Self-adhesive labelling technology has – in comparison with other techniques – by far the widest breadth of materials at its disposal. The range of adhesives is similarly impressive," Fairley says.

"Moreover, in the case of the production of self-adhesive labels using narrow web printing, a wide range of different procedures is used, the like of which is not found in any other package printing segment. Not infrequently, the various printing, processing, and finishing procedures are combined to form a single production line and carried out as an inline process. The variety of material combinations and production possibilities assures the success of the narrow web printing industry. It is an enormous pot of innovative solutions to problems that allows self-adhesive technology to constantly tap new fields of application and markets," Fairley continues.

Selective economic climate

According to Andrea Vimercati, the pace of innovation is slowed only by today's difficult economic climate. The current FINAT president is steering both FINAT, an international organisation promoting the self adhesive labelling industry, and the label printing company Pilot Italia Spa through murky water.

"In fact, the volume of orders for the industry as a whole is completely satisfactory. However, incoming orders are, in some cases, fluctuating greatly, so that production capacities in many areas are utilised extremely unevenly. In particular, smaller label print shops can have difficulties handling such fluctuations. As a consequence, customers will pass their orders to companies with the most flexible production structures possible, thus ensuring natural selection within the market," Vimercati observes.

In addition, Vimercati also anticipates the consolidation of the label industry through mergers and takeovers. The branded goods industry sector – one of the most important customer segments for label producers – is also hoping that this development will occur. Above all, the international corporate groups are anxious to work together with industrially positioned suppliers in the packaging industry. In the opinion of Fairley, there is a lot of ground to be made up here to meet the ambitious requirements of vendors of branded products – who year after year expect successful economies to be made to cut costs.

"One possible solution is to follow the already well established trend for thinner materials," explains Noel Mitchell, Vice President of Global Business Development at UPM Raflatac.

Major trend for sustainability

One topic that business groups are currently bringing to public attention with force is sustainability. For the label industry this means, in particular, getting to grips with the issue of reducing waste.

According to Mitchell, liner materials should not be a costly waste problem. He is convinced that long-term solutions will emerge whereby liner materials are considered to be valuable raw materials. One example is the polypropylene liner, PP30, introduced by UPM Raflatac. In the case of conventional glassine liner materials, costs are incurred for their disposal, whereas the polypropylene film can be sold for a profit to recycling companies after use.

"UPM Raflatac has decided to include the PP30 liner in its RafCycle recycling programme. Through RafCycle, UPM Raflatac pays a fee for used PP30 liner to be delivered to UPM ProFi mills in Germany or Finland and reutilised as a raw material for wood plastic composite products," Mitchell explains.

Innovations promote growth

To date, the label industry has always managed to continue to grow – above all through innovations. Some
examples from recent decades include computer labels for logistics, thermal labels for retail, and transparent film labels for the so-called "no label look." Self-adhesive labels have been particularly successful where they provide solutions that other technologies are often not able to achieve.

For the future, Fairley sees a large amount of innovative potential in nanotechnology, even if the opportunities and risks of nanotechnology are still being discussed in a controversial fashion amongst the public.

"Possible fields of application with regard to labels might, for example, include conductive coatings for circuits or antibacterial/antimicrobial coatings," Fairley says.