Lintec establishes materials brand in Europe

Lintec specializes in highly technical, high performance adhesive labels for demanding sectors including medical, automotive, electrical, environmental and digital labeling.

At the show Lintec Corporation Japan joins its European branch for the first time as Lintec Group to launch a range of new products. This is a key part of the company’s strategy to increase global materials sales by 20 percent to 240 billion yen by Fiscal 2017.

For many European converters, Lintec is best known for its intermittent letterpress machines, but there will be no machinery on the Lintec stand at Labelexpo and no plans to promote the presses at the show.

Says Sumio Morimoto, general manager, printing & variable information products operations, business administration division at Lintec: ‘We are focused on materials and not machinery in Europe. Our stand in Europe will have materials but no presses.’

Lintec’s materials range is highly diverse. Apart from the adhesive label papers and films which will feature at Labelexpo, the company produces shatter-proof window films, films for outdoor signs, automobile-use adhesive products, semiconductor-related adhesive tapes and LCD-related adhesive films.

Until recently Lintec focused its materials sales on the domestic and local Asian market, but this has changed dramatically as the company looks to become a true global player. Over the ten years from 2005-2015 Lintec Group's overseas sales increased roughly 2.8-fold, and now account for 39 percent of overall production.

This has been matched by the development of a global network that now consists of 29 companies in 56 locations. In less than three years, the group established sales bases in New Delhi, Hanoi, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur, as well as a delivery center in Mumbai. Europe will be the next serious target, building on Lintec’s European operation established in the Netherlands twenty years ago.

Lintec’s success in Asia has come through the development of specialist products for niche and challenging applications across the home electronics, automobile, medical and pharmaceutical product categories, developed to comply with the strict quality requirements of many of Japan’s leading global manufacturers.

‘The knowhow gained through the development of our wide-ranging portfolio of industrial-use products has become the base for label materials that address different needs,’ says Sumio Morimoto.

Lintec develops internally its own base papers, release papers, films and adhesives. ‘This allows us to match these materials with surface substrates and laminate films to meet the customer’s needs, regardless of where, for how long, and in what kind of environment the label will be attached, or what kind of printing will be done, or if it will be affixed by hand or machine,’ says Morimoto.

Recycling innovation

An example of Lintec innovation is the product shortlisted for a Global Label Award in the Sustainability category (the winner will be announced at Labelexpo Europe).

KP5000 is a film facestock that incorporates 80 percent recycled post-consumer PET pellet, with the raw material produced by mechanical recycling. Lintec says the facestock is functionally equivalent to virgin PET films, and is manufactured at a lower production cost than similar recycled materials.

The Japanese market consumes 66 million sqm of PET-based PSA materials a year, and Lintec holds a staggering 60 percent share of this market, so is in a powerful position to make a positive environmental impact.

As an example, The Label Industry Company located in Kagawa Prefecture contributed significantly to the drive by Kamikatzu town to implement a 3R campaign (Recycle, Reduce, Reuse) by supplying the town brewery with the facestock.

And The Transit General Office Microbrewery supported the efforts of its local township to become the first zero waste emitting town in Japan by using KP5000 film labels.

In the longer term, Lintec is gearing up for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, ‘where brand-owners will be more willing to take on the challenge of environmentally friendly production.’

For further info:

Lintec will exhibit at Labelexpo Europe on stand 4A35