Emballage Packaging Show (Paris)
The 38th World Packaging Exhibition, held in Paris in November 2008, boasted around 2,000 exhibitors and just over 100,000 visitors, 6 percent down from the previous Paris show held in 2006. The exhibitors were international, but the visitors seemed to be overwhelmingly French, as indeed were the label converters whose booths were grouped around that of the French label association UNFEA. On- and off-record conversations with these firms helped your correspondent take the pulse of the French label sector. “It’s all a question of which end user sector you look at,” said Christophe Traineau, CEO of Etiq’Ouest. “One of our specialties is making high-tech labels for automobiles. Today, automobile sales in France are down by nearly 10 percent, and most of the vehicles that are sold here are made in Eastern Europe. So on that front, our prospects for the next year are pretty bad. However, our sales of other kinds of high value-added ‘technical’ labels are scarcely affected by the downturn. As for food labels, the volumes sold took a dip in the late summer, but they are rising again as we approach the end-of-year celebrations.”
Stéphane Pagot of Breger Emballages was resolutely optimistic: “We are here at the show to meet our customers and show them in particular our shrink sleeve label technology. The French retail goods sector is getting even more competitive and we can show retailers and brand managers how to make their products stand out on the shelves.”