A Clear And Pleasant Flexibility: The Supermarket And Flexible Films

By Noel Ward

Short Run Rising

In the third quarter of 2013 InfoTrends surveyed 250 brand owners in Europe, most of them food brands. On average, respondents estimate short run printing of flexible packaging will rise 28% through 2015. “The trend in North America is almost certainly similar,” says Bob Leahey, an Associate Director at InfoTrends in Weymouth, MA. “It is common to hear flexible packaging converters in North America complaining about increasing numbers of short run jobs, versioning, the proliferation of SKUs, ‘lean’ manufacturing, and supply chains.”

For now, most of these short run jobs will go to flexographic presses, but digital is going to intrude on this space. Consider the recent introduction of Mark Andy’s Digital Series, a configurable system that integrates full color, quality digital printing technology that address converters’ needs for fast change, web handling, in-line converting, and other label and package decoration options. The system combines the economies and productive advantages of all-digital workflows, digital inkjet printing and flexographic printing processes.

You can learn a lot about flexible packaging trends by going to the grocery store. So let's take a walk.

Stroll down the pet food aisle and look at the sizes and shapes of packages and you see fewer and fewer paper bags of dry dog and cat food and more and more colorful flexible film containers from smaller size standup pouches to bags big enough to feed a kennel of Great Danes. A couple aisles over in the baking needs section, many mixes for cakes and muffins and brownies are also wrapped in flexo printed films. The purveyors of these products and more are increasingly eschewing paper and chipboard containers in favor of flexible packaging films.

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A Clear and Pleasant Flexibility: The Supermarket and Flexible Films