Page 29 - FINAT Yearbook 2019

different one. It is a proven, major winning strategy, he has himself proved, for brand success. His wake-up call was that you need to show you really care about your customers’ business, and to get closer to them than anyone else. After all, he said, in the world of labels and packaging, you ‘spend your time painting the face of the world’s leading brands!’
THE NORDIC LABEL MARKET
Lars Ole Nauta (DK), CEO of Flexoprint AS and Vice President of the Danish Label Association, and Leif Persson (SE),
Senior Vice
President and
Managing
Director of
Sweden’s
StrongPoint
organisation, drew an interesting
portrait of trends in the Nordic label
market. In the self-adhesive label
market, Lars Ole Nauta predicted that
consolidation, environmental concerns, leadtimes, and – again – the need to attract young industry participants as they exit from university education would be ongoing concerns. The latter is already an active platform in Sweden, as Leif Persson showed; and he also highlighted, as well as local business issues, the changing focus of a printed label – in terms of word content (due to legislation, food safety, and other issues) rather than simply branding.
FINAT MARKET UPDATE
It was then the turn of FINAT Managing Director Jules Lejeune (NL) to report on European market statistics, trends, and developments. In terms of label substrates, he showed, non-paper rolls had increased their market share to 27% of total demand in 2018, and sheet label consumption had declined again by over 2%. He said that the top five label
market countries in Europe – Germany, UK, France, Italy, and Spain – account for almost 60% of the total, with Russia and Poland now ‘knocking on the door’. Only two countries in the broader European market – UK and Turkey – evidenced any market decline in 2018 over prior year.
Changing end-use market focus
The industry profile, he showed, exhibits a remarkable shift in end-use markets over 2017, with only pharmaceuticals, personal care, and household chemicals exceeding growth
rates of the prior year. While 2017 was the year of ‘non-prime’ (variable information) growth, 2018 showed stronger performance of the ‘prime’ labelling sectors.
Interestingly, converters surveyed in FINAT’s researches projected that their purchases of conventional analogue presses would outnumber those of digital presses in 2019 and 2020.
In the sustainability arena, recycling of ALL spent release liner is now actioned by around a fifth of label converters surveyed, with a further 11% recycling some, and a further 33% engaged in planning a system set-up in the next year. With short-run digital print and the current focus on innovative decoration aspects, the label market’s prospects are, said Jules Lejeune, still promising.
A LOOK AT THE GLOBAL MARKET
Corey Reardon, President and CEO of
Alexander Watson Associates (NL/
USA), went to look at the broader
global labelling and product
decoration market. By technology, he
showed, self-adhesive labels still
enjoy the majority share, at 40%, with
glue-applied labels in second place
at 35%, and the sleeve labelling
technologies now in third place at 19%.
While self-adhesive labels continued to grow by over 5% in 2018, thanks to their flexibility, variety, and efficiency, sleeve labelling grew faster; and in-mould labelling also grew at above 4%. Industrial/variable information print label applications still represent the majority end-use shareholding, at 45%, but primary product labels are now just 1% behind them in terms of global volumes.
Asia is the largest regional market – and also the fastest- growing for all labelling formats – but the label market enjoyed growth globally in 2018 at over 4%. Corey Reardon’s analysis spanned digital packaging and label print, direct-to- container print, merger and acquisition activity and industry consolidation, and of course the industry’s recyclability issues – which, he said, are ‘not just a problem for pressure-sensitive technology’ in terms of release liner and matrix waste, but also for shrink films in sleeving applications.
‘UNPACK YOUR FUTURE!’
Next, it was time for session moderator Andy Thomas-Emans (UK), Strategic Director of Labelexpo organisers Tarsus, to interview Guido Schmitz (D), currently Adjunct Professor for Packaging Engineering at Rutgers University, New Jersey, a board member of AIPIA, the Active and Intelligent Packaging Association, and Head of Packaging and Technology Innovation at Bayer HealthCare (Consumer Division). It was an
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