Business Management - Industry Trends

Global demand for packaging machinery is projected to expand 4.9 percent per year through 2010 to over $33 billion. Developing parts of the world will provide suppliers with some of the best sales opportunities going forward. Industrialization-related fixed investment activity, rising per capita incomes and growth in packaged goods production will all contribute to increases in equipment demand in these areas, most notably in Asia and Eastern Europe. China will record the largest gains of any national market, surpassing Japan to become the second largest market in the world behind the U.S. Sales conditions are also expected to be strong in India, Russia, Mexico,

BOUCHERVILLE, Quebec—L’Oréal judges the ETI technology essential for the production of its “back-to-back labels” in a context of cost reduction and environmental care strategy. L’Oréal recognizes that ETI equipment users represent the best opportunity to manufacture L’Oréal’s new patented labels. The multinational has developed a system to reduce the wastage of the liner for the label application process. The system consists in having two webs, one on each side of the glassine liner. This way the same liner is used twice in the label application process, thus cutting out the waste by half. In accordance to L’Oreal’s cost reduction objectives, the combination of ETI

Color matching is a shady business. The slightest difference between the color on the label and the shade of the contents can result in unhappy customers and lost future business, which is why self-adhesive label printers take so much time and trouble to ‘get it just right.’ “Color matching is probably the most difficult part of our job,” said David Harrisson, president of FINAT, the international trade association for the self-adhesive label industry. Long gone are the Henry Ford days of having ‘any color you want providing it is black’. Today’s consumer lives in a colorful world and demands the exact shade of colour

Attention RFID converters: clear your schedules now, because it looks like you’re going to be a bit busy for the next 10 years. Independent consultant IDTechEx predicts RFID technology will eventually become as ubiquitous as the barcode, and converters have the potential to play a more pivotal role in production. A report by the organization projects as early as 2016 that RFID “will mostly be printed directly onto packaging and products, possibly in the hundreds of billions, and [will use] special electronic inks.” Back here in the present, with the technology still in its early stages, there is no standard route to involvement for

As we head into mid-2006, we embrace the many positive changes in the smart label industry. The ratification of the Class 1 Generation 2 ultra-high frequency (UHF) protocol has provided a long-awaited UHF stateside standard. As the EPCglobal organization is progressing to make this a global standard, there are now only a few countries left that have yet to adopt this standard. In the past year, major progress has been made to overcome the RFID issues, which fluids and metals have caused. This will accelerate the ability to implement RFID into these products and increase the demand for high volumes of smart labels. High yields

Part One: Low Cost Entry — Wrapping Electronics RFID is an important enabling technology that appears in an ever-widening variety of applications. In the past, the emergence of barcodes helped create a large label market that lasted for one or two decades before people figured out how to print the barcodes directly on to packaging and products. So, today only 5-15 percent of barcodes appear as labels. However, there are now so many barcodes required—up to 10 trillion yearly—that even the minor percentage still taking the form of labels constitutes a substantial business. This label business will endure because the labels perform special functions,

In the mid-1990s, flexible two-dimensional radio-frequency identification (RFID) inlays were introduced by Texas Instruments (TI) to label converting companies as the basis for manufacturing smart labels. Today, smart labels are used to track products in the supply chains of the world’s largest retailers and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Wal-Mart, Target, Tesco, and numerous other companies in North America and Europe, as well as the U.S. Department of Defense, are all in the process of changing over their distribution and supply operations to include RFID. Since the introduction of inlays less than a decade ago, RFID usage has changed considerably. In these few years, volume has grown

Download the 2007 packagePRINTING Excellence Awards nomination form. As a unanimous vote among packagePRINTING’s 2006 Excellence Awards judges, Hayward, Calif.-based Rotocolor’s “Marilyn Merlot” wine label is this year’s Best of Show honoree for its superior flexographic printing. “It really shows where flexo can go,” said Roy Webb, national sales manager, Mark Andy. “It has fantastic quality and could sit side-by-side with the lithographic print.” This entry was also a first place winner in the Wine Labels - Flexo (Process) category. “The piece is exceptional and shows how far along flexo has come,” said Bob Waddington, general manager, UVitec Printing Ink. “The skin tones are

FID has exploded through the critical mass point, with more and more companies getting involved. A few companies, though, have been producing RFID products for several years now. In the following Q&A, several of these companies describe their involvement over the years and some of their experiences. pP: What is your company’s background? Nancy Mitchell, national product manager, RFID, RR Donnelley—RR Donnelley is a full-service global print provider and the largest printing company in North America, serving customers in publishing, healthcare, advertising, retail, telecommunications, technology, financial services, and many other industries. Founded more than 140 years ago, the company provides solutions in commercial printing, forms and

NAPERVILLE, Ill.--The Tag and Label Manufacturers Institute, Inc., (TLMI) Naperville, IL, has commissioned AWA Alexander Watson Associates to research and publish the 2007 edition of the North American Label Study (NALS). This in-depth TLMI study, updated by the association every three years, aims to inform label converters and suppliers about the drivers shaping the pressure-sensitive label market. It also provides benchmark-level researched market data and trend information to assist companies in making business decisions critical to their growth and profitability -- a strong benefit for TLMI member companies and others involved or considering participation in the North American label market. “Publication of the North American