Ukraine – it’s not just about tanks

Khmelnytskyi, in Western Ukraine, is the home of package printer Pryvatna Drukarnya. Before the war broke out in February 2022, the company was in touch with UK’s GEW and was looking to buy a UV LED curing system for its Komori L640+C sheet-fed offset press. The invasion put a stop to this plan, as the company’s premises were thrown open to accommodate refugees fleeing the war-torn East of the country.

More recently, Pryvatna Drukarnya had an urgent need to get back into production to continue as a viable business. CEO Mikhail Gluhovski wrote to Robert Rae, managing director of sales at GEW, and the British equipment manufacturer promptly offered to supply the equipment free of charge.

“Thanks to the goodwill of our European partners,” says Gluhovski, “We found an appropriate way to buy cardboard and consumables for new orders and to pay off debts at the same time. We are thankful to GEW and everyone who helped us.” 

Asteria strikes again

In 2021, Asteria acquired UK’s CS Labels. This enabled the Asteria Group, based in Gullegem, Belgium, to increase its turnover to 170 million euros. With its 17 factories located in Belgium, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Estonia, Denmark and France, Asteria made no secret about its ambition to acquire more label converters.

Now, UK’s Berkshire Labels has become the latest addition to the Belgian group. Berkshire boasts three Mark Andy presses, an HP Indigo and a recently acquired Bobst Digital Master 340 with a Mouvent inkjet unit. Asteria has confirmed that Paul Roscoe will continue as CEO of Berkshire.

Ives Declerck, Asteria Group CEO, comments, “Berkshire Labels is a great company and great fit for the Asteria Group, and it will complement and expand our existing European and UK production sites. We look forward to supporting Paul and the team at Berkshire in their exciting growth plans.”

Label converting provides jobs for the handicapped

Created in 2010, Handiprint is a French company with 201 employees, of whom 150 are handicapped. All are trained in more than 10 activities, including graphic design, offset and digital printing, shaping, signage, routing and calendar production.

This year Handiprint is launching a new challenge: to become the first “adapted” company to invest in the roll label market. This initiative came to the notice of Marie-Anne Montchamp, the French Secretary of State for Solidarity and Social Cohesion, who welcomed the project, calling it “a tremendous step forward.”

Food packaging – use once, don’t throw away

As in many (but not all) European countries, the streets and parks are too often littered with empty bottles and packaging from fast-food meals. The European Union’s lawmakers are taking the lead in reducing this pollution with a new law in force since January of this year. Only reusable packaging is now allowed in restaurants. Although not unexpected, the new law has been met with howls of protest, some of them from unforeseen quarters. The Deutsche Umwelthilfe, (Institute for Ecology), confirms its strong support for reusable packaging but adds that there must be a 20-cent tax on all disposable packaging that is harmful to the environment and the climate. You can imagine what fast-food restaurants think about that.

In France, a major fast-food group with a Scottish-sounding name has a different complaint: its reusable cups and plates are so attractive to customers that they too often walk off with them. At least that saves on the washing up.

From envelopes to labels

People don’t write many letters these days, and Elep is Belgium’s last remaining envelope manufacturer. Seeing which way the icy wind is blowing, the company has invested in a Truepress Jet L350 from Screen. Says Elep’s CEO Yves Pfeiffer, “We wanted to invest in the latest technology, and the Screen digital inkjet press offers vivid, hard-wearing colors with low migration, which is increasingly important on the self-adhesive label market. Also, Screen’s European headquarters at Amstelveen are just 90 minutes away from our plant.”

Elep aims to take market share in the rather overcrowded sector of fast-delivery, short-run labels.

A Swedish cup of tea?

Nordvalls Etikett AB, one of Sweden’s largest label converters, has acquired Germany’s Kölle Etiketten GmbH and is in the process of taking over ownership. Two years ago Nordvalls went international, acquiring a UK label converter, but Kölle is its first step into Europe’s biggest label market. Curiously, Kölle Etiketten’s main product is not labels but tea bags. However, like Nordvalls, Kölle is a family-owned and managed business, and third-generation CEO Phillip Kölle will continue to manage the German plant, teabags and all.

A Belgian invests in bio-refining

Futtero designs and runs refineries to make polylactic acid (PLA), a biopolymer said to be capable of replacing many petroleum-based plastics. Its latest project is for a plant at Port-Jérôme-sur-Seine in France to produce 75,000 tons of PLA per year.

“We describe our polymer as the first ‘bio-renewable’ plastic,” says Futerro CEO Frédéric Van Gansberghe. “Derived from vegetable carbon, it can be easily and ecologically recycled to obtain a virgin polymer of the same quality as its first life cycle: this is a unique characteristic.”

At present the plot of land for this project is vacant, but the refinery, unlikely to come on stream before 2024, will employ 250 and could have a major impact on public opinion with regard to the use of plastics in labels and packaging. But don’t count your chickens just yet…

Holygrail 2.0 Initiative

The European Brands Association AIM is working on a solution to improve and automate the slow, costly and laborious recycling of packaging. Over 160 European companies have joined forces in the Digital Watermarks initiative “HolyGrail 2.0.”

The idea is simple: invisible codes, each the size of a postage stamp, cover most of the surface of the packaging. Each code contains information to assist automatic recycling. When packaging waste arrives at the sorting center a camera detects the “digital watermark” and sorts each item as appropriate (e.g. by type of plastic or by usage food/non-food). What could be simpler? Well, quite a lot of things. For a start, it’s one of those brilliant ideas, like credit cards or barcodes, that can only get off the ground if lots and lots of people and companies decide to join in. And given that Europeans can’t yet agree on the number of holes in a salt shaker, digital watermarking is probably not for tomorrow. But keep it in mind.

Substrate prices fall – at last

Most European substrate prices fell in Q4/2022, according to Flexible Packaging Europe (FPE). BOPP films fell most dramatically, by 15% between Q3 and Q4, but most other materials fell in the 5-10% range. Analysts say this welcome reduction is caused by sluggish demand and nervousness about the future, causing converters to run down their inventories. The fact remains that year-on-year, European substrate prices in 2022 were up by an eye-watering 60%.

Europe’s labelstock markets reflect this trend: 4th quarter volumes were down 24%, the biggest year-on-year fall since FINAT’s records were started in 2003. Taking the year 2022 as a whole, European labelstock deliveries by producers were down by “only” 4.7% by volume.

A survey of label converters shows most of them plan to increase output in Q1/2023. However, FINAT has stepped down from its usual ebullient optimism. To quote its latest forecast, Europe’s label markets in 2023 must face: “Economic uncertainty...caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, rising energy and raw materials costs, rising interest rates and a looming recession.” Happy New Year, folks!