It came as a nasty but not unexpected shock when on January 1 of this year, a new directive for packing fruit and vegetables came into force. Plastics are out, paper and carton are in.

Europe’s ecologists, who have been lobbying for this for a long time, are delighted. Food sector professionals have mixed views. Prices for all types of cartons have rocketed, as is well known, but that is only part of the problem.

“We have to be very fast on our feet, and with lengthening delivery times it’s hard to plan ahead,” says Daniel Sauvetre of the French fruit and vegetable association Interfel. “It beats me,” says the manager of your correspondent’s local Parisian supermarket, who adds, “We tried selling bio carrots in cartons and nobody wanted them. The same product in plastic sold just fine. For apples it was the opposite, customers preferred the carton.”

Changes also came into force in January for those little pressure sensitive labels on individual fruits like apples (and which the unwary consumer can eat without noticing).

These labels must also now be biodegradable. Well, one can see why. Similar packing regulations will be extended progressively throughout the European Union, but France unusually seems to have taken the initiative. Maybe it’s because Europe’s biggest wholesale market is located just outside Paris.

Swiss on a roll
For a small country, Switzerland does well with makers of packaging and label machinery. Gallus had a good year, so much so that its parent company Heidelberg said it was definitely but definitely not looking to sell it off.

Over on the other side of Switzerland, Bobst had an even better 2021, with sales up 40% on 2019. Southern Europe and North America were the best markets, according to the press manufacturer, but China underperformed.

Bobst emphasizes that the biggest innovations were not so much in new products but in remote servicing and troubleshooting to overcome in part the travel restrictions imposed on service engineers.

The Swiss are not normally prone to exaggeration, so when they report raw material prices doubling for rolled steel plates since January 2021 (and increasing 40-90% for other inputs) this is probably close to the truth. To say nothing of sea freight rates, which more than tripled over the year. All this, as Bobst coyly admits “impacted our pricing decisions.”

Yet more acquisitions
Isidore Leiser’s name has cropped up before in this column. He is the owner of Stratus Packaging, a $70 million French-based label group that he has created almost from scratch by a series of carefully considered, strategic acquisitions. With over 300 employees and six production sites, Stratus makes mainly pressure sensitive labels but also sleeves and IMLs.

In December of 2021, Stratus acquired Swiss label converter Koch AG, with its plant just down the road from Gallus. According to Leiser, this latest move will help it to better serve its pan-European customers and could be the precursor to further acquisitions in 2022.

Every French wine maker worth his salt wants his (or increasingly her) individual label as a work of art, delivered in record time.  This accounts for the survival of many small label converters scattered around France’s many wine-growing regions. But here too, consolidation is at work. In 2021, Imprimerie Devevey, in the prestigious center of Beaune, acquired Hery & Gradjon and set about an ambitious investment program of new equipment from Codimag and Grafotronic, aimed particularly at expanding its range of finishing options. The future is unsure for the French wine sector. The 2020 vintage was good (and is still being bottled), but late frosts hit the vines in the spring of 2021. Growers are pushing the “quality not quantity” argument; label converters would prefer the opposite.

A strike likely to have consequences
Strikes in Finland are rare, but the one that just started at UPM looks serious. It’s being reported that 3,000 employees at seven of the company’s paper mills are out, and the stoppage could last for as long as three weeks unless the company and the unions reach agreement on a package of benefits.

UPM has stated that it will “as far as possible” continue to supply customers from other mills outside Finland. However, this is likely to tighten still further the already tight market for labelstock.

As if the Finnish group did not have enough on its hands, the regional government of Normandy has stepped in to preempt the sale of the UPM mill at Chapelle Darblay. The lucky acquirer will now be Veolia, a waste-recycling specialist, who is reportedly in line to get a “sweetener” of 11 million euros of (taxpayers’) money when it completes the deal.

Testing, testing
It’s an ill wind they say that blows nobody no good. Ask Kraus Maschinenbau. Along with two other German manufacturers, they have perfected a labeling and packing line for the PCR kits used to detect the Covid-19 virus. The company known as cab is Europe’s biggest manufacturer of label printing systems, and it has worked hand-in-hand with cab to integrate IXOR labeling heads and CEON high-tech sensors into the packing lines to provide reliable, accurate label applications.

Explicit codes on these labels ensure, amongst others, product traceability.

Bruno Ott, Kraus’ product manager, praises the precision of cab systems equipment: “We have so far installed several units for PCR kits. The applications have always run perfectly.”

Alas, demand for this application is unlikely to dry up this year.

What hopes for 2022?
Firstly, get rid of the idea that the years since the first Covid outbreak have been an economic flop in Europe. Admittedly, Britain, Greece and Spain were laggards in GDP growth (or lack of it), but almost everywhere else growth has been good. Household income is up and share prices have soared by between 20% and 60%. So don’t despair of the Old Continent.

For packaging and label shows the prospects are unsure. One Paris packaging show planned for February has been put back to June; the next drupa won’t come round until 2024; Interpack in 2023. Labelexpo Europe, scheduled for the fall of last year, is still on course for the end April of this year. Much will depend on how the pandemic evolves over the coming weeks. Keep your fingers crossed.