A few days into the new year, my daughter lobbed a provocative question at me. “Twenty years ago, could you have imagined the technological advances we live with today?” Right away my brain went into the archive and began playing scenes from the mid-1990s forward. Far too much to take in here, I thought. Twenty years ago the only device I carried with me was my wristwatch. Sure, I had a computer, but I had never seen the Internet. Social media was an unknown term and a nonexistent technology. We weren’t even sure what email was. Shopping took place away from home. Nobody carried 6,000 songs in their back pocket. Twitter was a state of tremulous excitement or agitation.

Heck, it was just two decades ago, but look what’s happened since then.

Twenty years ago, this magazine was on the drawing board, and the label converting industry was a different world. Not radically different, but when we take a look at some of the differences between then and now we can discern shifts that justifiably can be called profound.

Certainly the most significant change in label manufacturing has been the juggernaut that is digital printing. Digital technology has, in fact, crept or barged its way into most aspects of label creation, from prepress to inspection and rewinding. The roles of the operators have changed as a result and not without some lamentation by those who savored the old ways of the old days. A good press operator once was considered an artist, because he had to employ more than mechanical skill to make a mechanical press produce the perfect image. These folks still walk among us because many old machines are still humming, but their numbers are dwindling.

Art on the shop floor is yielding to technology. The change began slowly but has gained momentum over the years. That finicky thing called plate impression used to require a lover’s touch. Today, a computer can take care of it. (“Trust me, Dave.”)

At a printing industry trade show in 1997, I asked a manufacturer of servo drives why narrow web flexo presses were not yet outfitted with those clever devices. “Economies of scale” was the answer; “too expensive” was the translation. It wasn’t long, however, before servos made their entry, most notably with the introduction by Gallus of its RCS inline label press. That machine had, and still has, a high price tag, but the door had been opened, and servos began showing up on presses from every manufacturer within a few years.

The servo press was able to eliminate the shafts and gears of conventional flexo machines, those moving parts that took a beating every day and which affected the finished product as they wore down. No longer did the operator have to waltz with the gears. The servos that turn the cylinders are hooked up to computers, so now the operator is a tech guy. The tech guy can also run the press from an iPad, another handy thing that came along a few years ago and changed everything. And that little computer in the press can talk to the manufacturer’s computer in St. Louis or Cincinnati or St. Gallen.

In many ways, prepress people were ahead of the technology curve 20 years ago. They were completing label designs on the screen and welcoming ever-newer generations of RIP devices and plate processors. And they no longer had to calculate for plate distortion because some chip took that job away from them. Still, the tools they thought were advanced back then look like Ford Falcons compared with the Ferraris that process images today. Who knew that software would ever be able to let you design a shrink label in virtual 3D?

Shrink labels barely existed two decades ago. Today, they are everywhere, and label converters stepped up to the plate to respond to the trend. It meant acquiring yet more equipment and learning another set of technological procedures, but it also has meant survival and growth. It pushed the substrate manufacturers to create new portfolios of films for the purpose, plastics that would perform in certain ways at varying temperatures. It’s a relatively new process that continues to raise its own bar every day.

Cold foil? When I set foot in the industry in 1995, the only company that was successfully applying foil without heat was Driscoll Label in New Jersey, then owned by the late Bob Biava and his wife, Pat. He had found the right adhesive to apply foil on a flexo station. Within a few years, cold foil application was taking on hot foil industry-wide.

Twenty years ago, UV curable varnishes were everywhere, but UV curable inks were just starting to attract wider attention in the label industry. Those inks were highly viscous and also scary, in that prolonged or repeated contact with skin could pose a serious health risk. Today, that risk is pretty much gone, and the inks aren’t as gooey. One thing about ink makers: They work nonstop to improve their products.

UV curing eventually became a common presence on the label press. It’s a versatile technology and still going strong, but it comes with significant energy requirements and the gas vapor bulbs also produce infrared light, which is hot and must be managed, especially when curing films. Then, quite recently, along came a light source to challenge the conventional UV bulb: LED. The light-emitting diode produces electrolumination by semiconduction. Its energy consumption is much lower, and the life span of the LED array is far greater than that of a quartz bulb. But it, too, produces heat, which must be extracted via air or water, and the LEDs must be placed quite close to the substrates. Today, we’re finding LED curing systems on some digital inkjet presses. The process isn’t widespread yet, but it’s worth watching.

Twenty years ago, the word Waste was not uttered anywhere near as often as it is today in our industry. Economic strain at the start of the current century caused converters to take a close look at waste of all kinds, not just materials. With significant speed, label printers of all sizes have embraced Lean Manufacturing, reworking their production, management and consumption practices with the goal of reducing or eliminating costly waste. For some, the change has been the key to survival in a time of severe economic fluctuations.

The effort to reduce waste has also led converters in North America to focus on the environmental impact that their businesses generate. The Tag & Label Manufacturers Institute ran with the ball and launched LIFE – the Label Initiative For the Environment – several years ago, and today about 60 converters and suppliers are LIFE certified, meaning that they are consciously engaged in reducing physical waste, chemical waste and energy waste in their operations. Members attest that such a course of action has a beneficial effect on the bottom line.

I haven’t even started talking about digital printing and here I am almost out of space. In the mid-90s, that process was in its infancy, regarded by most as an incredibly expensive wait-and-see thing. Today, digital presses can be found in companies run by some of the most cautious and conservative folks in the business. Digital has become an industry within an industry and is the source of a great amount of success at every tier.

Could we have imagined this 20 years ago?



The author is president of Jack Kenny Media, a communications firm specializing in the packaging industry, and is the former editor of L&NW magazine. He can be reached at [email protected].