Page 40 - FINAT Yearbook 2015

GAUGING MARKET TRENDS
TAIL WIND FOR EUROPEAN LABEL
MARKETS IN 2014
In the first quarter of 2015, European demand for self-adhesive label materials exceeded consumption in that same period a year earlier by 7.1%. Over the past 5 quarters, year-on-year growth in the label industry averaged 5.8% for paper roll materials, and 8.3% for filmic label materials according to FINAT’s authoritative labelstock statistics. While this is bringing back memories of former days when the European label industry consistently recorded well-above GDP growth rates, the question arises what causes this upswing at a time that Western European packaging markets have matured, their Eastern European counterparts are decelerating and most economies in the Eurozone have just emerged from recession. This is where FINAT’s Labelstock Statistics and our new half-yearly FINAT RADAR aim to complement each other. A matter of helping FINAT members to understand the drivers for their business.
In 2014, demand for self-adhesive label materials in the 30 wider European countries under review amounted to almost 6.4 billion square meters (roll and sheet materials together). This was an increase of 5.7% compared to the previous year (in 2013, growth compared with 2012 amounted to 3.4%). In one year, European label printers added some 320 million square meters of self-adhesive label business to their market in 2013, a volume not far off from the size of the combined label markets in the Benelux countries. In 2014, the volume of European label demand was 50% higher than in 2002 and more than 100% above the estimate for 1996.
Chart 1: Labelstock demand Europe, 1996 – 2014
ANNUAL GROWTH RATES: AN EARLY INDICA- TOR OF ECONOMIC TRENDS(?)
In hindsight, the growth pattern in self-adhesive materials demand since the beginning of 2003 is a reflection of the turbulent general economic climate since the early years of the
last decade: the gradual descent between 2005 and 2007, the recession during the credit crisis of 2008 and 2009, the strong rebound until mid 2010, and the double dip recession in 2011 amidst the government debt crisis, and finally the slow recovery since that period following the resulting uncertainty about the future of the Euro.
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Chart 2: Roll labelstock demand Europe, year-on-year growth 2003/I – 2015/I
Will the acceleration of the last 1.5-2 years appear to be a predictor of upcoming economic prosperity in Europe, or are there other underlying or cyclical factors at play that specifically benefit the self-adhesive label industry over other segments of the package printing and Product Deco and ID (PDID) sector?
FINAT YEARBOOK 2015 |