With a market value of over $300 billion, Swiss-based Nestlé is the world’s biggest food company, and nearly all its products are packaged and labeled. So, when Nestlé announces that, come 2025, all its packaging will be recyclable or reusable, the world’s packaging industry sits up and takes notice. Take a look round your local supermarket and you’ll see that not much packaging is reusable, so recycling is going to be the name of the game for several years to come.

There is a snag, however: nobody loves recycled packaging. The Chinese set the ball rolling, cutting imports of recovered fiber from some 28 million tons in 2017 to a projected five million tons in 2020. That leaves an awful lot of fiber looking for buyers. Turkey, another significant market, has limited paper recyclers’ fiber imports. Jean-Luc Petithuguenin of French recycler Paprec is optimistic, seeing improved market potential both in Europe and overseas.

And while recyclers are wondering what to do with their waste paper and board, researchers are busy inventing new and exciting things to do with virgin fibers. Chromatogeny and MFC Wet Lamination are two promising ways to create paper-based packaging, which is waterproof, and a barrier against greases and oxygen. Both technologies, which are in the pilot project stage, are said to be recyclable and biodegradable.

When it comes to recycled/recyclable filmic labels, 2020 has seen some hopeful developments. In 2019, Germany’s Schäfer Etiketten won an industry prize for its self-adhesive rPE film made of 50% PIR (Post Industrial Recyclate) and 50% PCR (Post Consumer Recyclate). However, it is well-known that PE ad PP are equally difficult to recycle, and in 2020 Schäfer, in cooperation with labelstock producer Herma, developed a film made of 100% PCR that is said to be a “greener” alternative to existing recycled films.

All the ink that’s fit to print
Inks use chemicals, and chemicals can be nasty stuff. This is why, after a long and difficult gestation, the European Union (EU) gave birth to REACH, a mammoth agency that governs the use of no fewer than 23,000 chemicals. Any EU producer or distributor can sell freely within the 27 countries of the EU, just by sticking to the REACH rulebook and its almost daily updates. The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) in Helsinki oversees and polices REACH, and it employs 600 to do so, helped by an annual budget of $120 million.

Anyone wishing to export any of these 23,000 chemicals into the EU must submit a detailed technical dossier and appoint a local agent. If you think that the whole setup is designed to favor EU producers, well you could be right. Now we get to the interesting bit: Britain finally (and after an even longer gestation) left the EU on January 1, 2021.

British agency HSE, known colloquially as UK REACH, has been set up to take on ECHA’s job for chemical companies producing, importing to or exporting from Britain. The HSE will need to ask the Helsinki body for a data-sharing deal. Malicious rumors are circulating that Finland may reply to England, “We’re rather busy at present, please call later.” But, of course, that couldn’t be true, could it?

Which brings us to Heidelberger Druckmaschinen once again. Having bought up 100% of Swiss-based Gallus in 2014, Heidelberg seemed set to become a heavyweight maker of narrow web presses. Last year in a surprising change of tack it sold most of Gallus to Benpack.

Now Heidelberg has shed another division, selling its printing ink business to DC Druck Chemie GmbH, a subsidiary of Langley Holdings PLC in the UK. The sale includes the companies BluePrint Products NV and Hi-Tech Chemicals BV, both located in Belgium.

“With the withdrawal from the production of printing chemicals, we are making good progress with our realignment and concentration on our core activities,” says Rainer Hundsdörfer, CEO of Heidelberg. “We will use the funds freed up by this to safeguard our liquidity in times of the COVID-19 pandemic and to push ahead with strategic investments in the future on the path of our digital transformation.”

And they won’t have to worry about REACH.

Swiss manufacturer on a roll
In the early months of 2015, few people in the label business knew much about Bobst. Then came the dramatic change when this Swiss maker of sheet packaging machinery took a controlling interest in Italy’s Nuova Gidue.

The latter’s narrow web presses were – and are still – sold worldwide, but now under the Bobst brand. Then, in June 2017, Bobst acquired just over 50% of Radex to develop Mouvent, a start-up company focusing on digital inkjet printing, using its “cluster” technology.

Bobst has gone on record as saying that over 20 presses using this technology were sold during 2020. This Swiss manufacturer has just recently signed a partnership with Italy’s SEI Laser to further develop digital laser cutting technologies for the label and packaging sectors.

CEO Jean-Pascal Bobst represents the fourth generation of the family to head up the group, founded in 1890. In 2019, the company employed 5,500 people worldwide and had sales of $1.9 billion. For people in the label business, it is now definitely a company to watch.

Upbeat in Montreal
Last fall, this column reported on the Inessence Group, based in the French town of Montreal. Originally making labels for wines and spirits, the group has used acquisitions to branch out into other end-use sectors. The group’s founder and manager, Eric Groshens, rejects the idea of acquiring direct competitors.

“To succeed in associating companies and people from different cultures and sometimes with different types of products is exciting and enriching for everyone. Covid or no covid, our aim is to double our annual sales within five years, from $60 million to $120 million.”

Another group with the wind in its takeover sails is Fedrigoni. The Italian paper producer acquired Ritrama in January 2020 and clearly felt that swallowing a major European labelstock manufacturer was good for its digestion. So much so that in November 2020 it completed its acquisition of Mexico’s Industrial Papelera Venus.

Fedrigoni’s CEO commented that this acquisition will “strengthen our presence in Central and South America, and expand our market in the Southern United States, a region which interests us a lot.”

This CEO’s name is Marco Nespolo, so you won’t be surprised to know the group has a production plant in China.

Guido van der Schueren has been developing prepress systems for labels ever since the 1970s, which must make him one of the industry’s doyens. He was marketing manager of Disc NV in Belgium before becoming co-founder of Artwork Systems, which later became EskoArtwork.

Now chairman of UK-based Global Graphics Plc, he announced in December 2020 the acquisition of Hybrid Software. Commenting on this move, he says, “Combining Global Graphics and Hybrid Software will create the foremost enterprise software supplier for digital printing, as well as for traditional label and packaging market segments. The combined company will total more than 250 dedicated employees with a wealth of experience in software and hardware development. I look forward to concluding the transaction at the beginning of 2021 and to a very bright future for the new company.”

From prepress to finishing is just a small step, and the month of December also saw a big step up for Highcon, which launched a successful IPO on the Tel Aviv stock exchange.

Highcon’s digital cutting and creasing machinery is well established worldwide. CEO Shlomo Nimrodi admitted that the first half of 2020 had been difficult for Highcon due to the pandemic and the cancellation of drupa, but said that in the second half of the year business had picked up in both Europe and the US. One of Highcon’s main shareholders is Benny Landa, who started in the digital graphics business in 1969, which puts him too in the doyen class.

Touchy feely for wine and juice labels
Screen-printed wine labels are nothing new. Now, digital technologies are opening up new possibilities to attract the wine-lover. A recent study by UPM Raflatac showed clearly that customers go for 3D effects and for brighter colors.

French label converter Synia says that doming further enhances the marketing effect for wines. Especially for white wine labels, Fedrigoni offers a velvet feel to its “Tintoretto” water-
resistant labelstock.

Another label converter is using a touch-and-smell effect for a very up-market grapefruit juice. The label also comprises 3D hot-foil, a tactile varnish and a patch that changes color
with temperature.

And finally, gin
Graphic creativity has reached a new height with a shrink sleeve label for gin, imagined and produced by UK’s Berkshire Labels (which can be seen in the photo on page 36). When you know that it is “Enhanced by an LED base light and suspended leaves of 23 carat edible gold leaf,” you will appreciate that this is an embellishment even further up-market than the grapefruit juice.

According to Berkshire Labels, “This technically complex 360-degree shrink sleeve displays an illustration through both sides of the glass. This allows the 3D festive winter scene to jump through the front window.”

Drinkers are advised not to try the same trick.