Carol Houghton: What’s in store for 2012?

2011 was an eventful year in the label world. This year, the popularity of ‘smart labels’ will surely continue to grow and new innovations will be launched accordingly.  A recent report showed that consumers are increasingly using mobile technology applications such as QR codes to access information on products, especially to access information such as the product’s ethical credentials and origin. ‘Eco-labels’ have been criticized for causing confusion as many shoppers are unable to distinguish between Organic, Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance and QR codes offer easy, instant access to such data.

Towards the end of last year, the retail situation in India dominated the headlines. According to Benjamin Punchard and Lamine Lahouasnia, Euromonitor International, market research and analyst firm, the Indian retail market is evolving and moving towards a supermarket/hypermarket model – regardless of the Indian government’s actions on retail Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The market is seriously underdeveloped in comparison to other regions, with virtually no infrastructure or chill chain. This means there is plenty of potential for label industry growth, and we will be watching closely to see how it develops.

L&L issue 5 2011 looked at the food labeling sector and highlighted the problem of food wastage – the UK alone throws away £12 billion of food according to the date on the label, when it is actually still safe to eat. I’ve just seen an exciting new labeling system which is planned for release to the retail market at the beginning of this year. Oli-Tec labels is a patent-protected traffic-light style food freshness label from Open Life Packaging that looks set to have a huge impact on the UK food industry (see L&L issue 1 2012 for more information).

Sustainability, as well as the continuing battle to increase shelf appeal and create value added packaging, will remain on my list of things to watch for in the year to come. I’ll also be focusing on design agencies, looking at their work with regards to the label and their views on how its role will change within specific sectors. If you’ve got something to say, get in touch!

Carol Houghton
Editorial assistant
Labels & Labeling