Georgia Not on Your Mind

When your country has Russia as its neighbor to the North (and is occupying a chunk of your territory), it pays to keep a low profile. But the small country of Georgia has a flourishing economy. Its wines have a high and justified reputation, and good wines need good labels. Polyprint Georgia, based in the capital Tblisi, is one of Georgia’s leading converters and has installed an Omet KFlex flexo press. This is Polyprint’s entry into rotary label converting, to complement its established sheetfed offset business. It is just one more example in a long series of sheetfed offset converters changing to continuous flexo or digital. 

A key advantage of this Omet KFlex is its inline finishing with cold foil application, lamination, varnishing, and diecutting in a single pass, allowing the company to produce decorative effects including metallic finishes, tactile varnishes, and embossing. The company plans to grow its business in the premium label segment, where demand from wine, spirits, cosmetics, and specialty food brands continues to grow. The new press will primarily be used for aluminum foil labels, wrap-around wine labels, and a wide range of premium self-adhesive labels, where precise registration and decorative finishing are essential. 

Says Omet’s area export manager Tatiana Gaponova, “Omet is proud to serve the Georgian market by providing innovative, reliable, and high-performance printing and converting solutions to help printers improve their productivity, quality, and competitiveness.”

Bitter Yemen

Many L&NW readers may have difficulty pinpointing Georgia on a map, and the same may be true for Yemen. Selling packaging equipment in this Middle Eastern country is not for the faint-hearted. Around 70% of the war-torn country is controlled by the Houthi tribes. They like Iran and hate pretty much everyone else. They particularly enjoy taking potshots at shipping going up or down the Red Sea. But nothing perturbs Italy’s Lombardi Converting Machinery, which has announced the sale of a new Invicta i1 800 to All Pack Yemen for Printing. This marks another milestone in the company’s expansion into the flexible packaging market.  

Now part of the HSA Group, All Pack Yemen for Printing is based in the city of Taiz. HSA Group was founded in 1938 in the port of Aden, then a British colony, as a small retail store, and has since then developed into an importer and distributor of all kinds of commodities. Impossible not to admire Lombardi for this latest equipment sale. But if the Invicta should break down (which of course it won’t), pity the poor maintenance expert who gets shipped in to put it right!

Perhaps less newsworthy, since much closer at hand, is the installation of an Invicta 670 at the Carby Label plant near Bari in Southern Italy. It is Carby Label’s fourth Invicta. With its 670 mm web width, this Invicta is designed to run both traditional label converting and wider web flexible packaging applications. According to Lombardi, the inline flexo press offers high levels of automation, faster job changeovers, and print consistency. Says Enrico Gandolfi, Lombardi’s sales director for Italy, “This new Invicta i1 670 will support the company’s expansion into the flexible packaging market, a segment in which Lombardi continues to strengthen its presence and reputation both in Italy and internationally.”

Out of Focus

After 45 years, Britain’s Focus Label Machinery company has ceased trading, with the business now up for sale. All 21 staff were made redundant. The company made printing and finishing machinery for both narrow web flexo and digital sectors. It was present in the labels, security and packaging markets, as well as the textile/garment labels sectors, specializing in made-to-measure machinery. 

Under pressure from heavyweight competitors, Focus Label could not compete internationally and suffered from sluggish growth in the British market. Justin Brown, director of CY Group, insolvency specialist, says, “Focus Label Machinery struggled with cashflow pressures, having been particularly affected following the USA attack on Iran earlier this year, which resulted in delayed payments from its customers.”

GIPEA

The GIPEA Congress – the Italian Association of Self-Adhesive Label Manufacturers – which took place June 16-17 in Mogliano Veneto, promised in its title to address the topics of data management, creativity, and artificial intelligence.

The label market worldwide is doing well. GIPEA president Stefano Salvemini highlighted this when presenting FINAT data, which reports the production of 76 billion square meters of labels in 2025, with China ranking first in consumption and Europe second. However, he added, this market faces significant challenges that call for reflection, in particular on security and energy transition.

Salvemini summarized today’s world trends as bringing strategic operations closer to home (reshoring), choosing stable neighboring countries (nearshoring), and working with reliable partners (friendshoring). And certainly, using AI to produce less waste, higher quality, greater speed, better traceability, and more customization.

The GIPEA Congress also served as an important opportunity for technological updates, featuring Manuel Todeschi, sales support manager of the Durst Group’s Italian Sales Division, who summarized the company’s technological offering through three key concepts: simplicity, reliability, and performance. Luca Mauri of T&K spoke about the potential of expanding into wide-web printing.

Finally, the conference concluded with an update on PPWR. Just in case any readers have forgotten, this Europe-wide regulation, which came into force in August 2026, has been giving headaches to the whole packaging industry. It is officially known as “Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging and packaging waste.” (For more on PPWR, turn to page 44)

Release Liners, the Biggest Headache of All

European associations FINAT (labels) and AFERA (tapes) have jointly published a position paper on the treatment of release liners under the new EU PPWR Regulation. The paper explains why release liners should not be considered packaging, as they “perform an essential technical function and form an integral part of the product.” 

The paper further argues that release liners used in industrial and manufacturing processes should be treated in the same way that led the European Commission to exclude adhesive process films from the definition of packaging. The two trade associations call for a unified interpretation across all 27 EU countries to avoid everyone-for-themselves national approaches.

Robotic Labeling Cell

Autoinjectors are a difficult product to label efficiently. Labeling specialist Herma reckons it has found the answer.  With a configuration of its 211R HC robotic labeling cell adapted for a pharmaceutical customer, Herma shows how the demanding labeling processes for autoinjectors can be flexibly automated. At the heart of the system is a unique process architecture, featuring a Stäubli TS2-100 SCARA robot, a buffer station, and a separate transport and rotation unit. The interaction of these components, according to Herma, enables a stable, reproducible process while ensuring gentle handling, even with complex product geometries. The SCARA robot uses a gripper to remove the unlabeled products from the trays and places them in a buffer station. There, a transport and rotation unit takes over.

“The revolution in packaging

management caused by PPWR

will have a massive  impact on our industry.”

Translucent Security Seals

Tamper-proof security closures are nothing new. But Austria’s Securikett reckons it has gone one better with its highly translucent, paper-based Security Seals. These new tamper-resistant closures are said to combine sustainability with design flexibility for packaging across a wide range of industries. 

The new seals are available with either a Fiber-Tear effect or VOID technology, and for the first time, are “highly translucent.” 

“With our new highly translucent security seals, we have reached another milestone in the development of our technology,” says Vanessa Mitterer-Kling, head of Research & Development, Securikett.

PPWR, a Cost-Benefit Estimate

The revolution in packaging management caused by PPWR will have a massive impact on our industry. According to estimates cited in various industry analyses, the transition brought about by PPWR could generate cumulative savings of up to 47.2 billion euros by 2030. It could cost approximately 5 to 6 billion euros. Both these figures should be taken with a large pinch of salt. If, and only if, these previsions are sound, the overall net benefit would therefore remain highly positive. Europe’s packaging sector is reckoned to be worth 1,000 billion euros, give or take a billion or two. It directly affects production, logistics, and disposal costs. Every year in the EU, over 180 million metric tons of packaging are sold. What’s more, packaging accounts for 36% of total waste.

The Grand Mobility Challenge

This challenge event, held every year in France, invites employees to re-think their daily travel to and from work, as well as their business travel. The idea is to encourage carpooling, so as to improve the environment and reduce the number of vehicles on France’s congested roads. 

Label converter Stratus Décomatic participated for the first time in the Mobility Challenge. Their performance was improved, but not dramatically. Roll on June 2027, for the next edition…with the goal of doing even better!