Continuing the look back at our industry through the history of Whitmar Publications, we bring ourselves to 2006 and take a look at what the suppliers saw.
FlexoTech: March 2006
Part of the finishing
In this article Paul Yeomans from Gerardt gives us his view of the market as seen by one of the prominent suppliers of die-cutting equipment.
The past five years have seen some major changes in the worldwide labelling markets. New technological advances such as RFID and other ‘smart’ labels have meant increasing challenges for converters and die makers but also afforded opportunities. With production growth in areas such as the FAR East and Eastern Europe these value added labels are increasingly being seen by many analysts as the future of the western European labelling market.
Competition from overseas where wages can be as little as a fifth of the western European average means that commodity labels where an end user is able to order in many labels at a time may continue to take work away from the UK and other well developed producing countries.
However, the rapid rise of smart labels and increasingly complex materials that need converting suggests that the western European converting market still has a healthy future.
