Focus on label markets: Special label types and constructions

More recently, new adhesive formulations have led to the development of the re-closable label, widely used for foods, wet wipes and certain household products.

For foods, the objective is to preserve freshness by providing a better oxygen barrier, and thus to reduce food wastage. Recent developments include special adhesive formulations for closing frozen foods (normal self-adhesive closures do not work at -20 deg C). For wet wipes the re-closable label is designed to keep the moisture in. However wipes contain chemicals, and special adhesives are needed which are not affected by these. Some detergent products are also marketed with a re-sealable label. Recently we have seen pattern-printed cold seal adhesives used as an alternative to self-adhesive complexes.

MULTI-LAYER OR BOOKLET LABELS

Originally developed to meet multi-language regulatory requirements, these labels are now used by FMCG manufacturers to inform the consumer and to present special offers. They can be foldout, fold-in, peel-off or concertina. These features can be used by brand owners to build brand loyalty. Even small containers like lipstick tubes or syringes can now be labeled with extended-text labels that meet compliance requirements for products with active ingredients.

Label converters like Schreiner Medipharm are using multi-page RFID-enabled labels (Figure 8.1, multi-page RFID) for hospital use.

Converters like CCL Label or J.H.Bertrand have specialty plants in several locations producing booklet and multi-layer labels for food, beverage and pharmaceutical sectors. Equipment suppliers Prati Company, AB Graphic and others have developed ranges of production machinery for making booklet labels.

Booklet machines for the pharmaceutical industry or other high security applications may also have inkjet print units to apply barcodes, sell-by dates or sequential numbering to either or both faces of the web. 

SMART OR INTELLIGENT LABELS

When this term was first used twenty years ago, the ‘smartness’ could only be achieved through a microchip in an RFID tag. Some tags were ‘active’, able to transmit and receive data, most were passive, able to receive and store only. All were too expensive for mass markets, but experts foresaw the day when the ten-cent smart label would dethrone the barcode. That did not happen. The reason is partly that barcodes are by far the cheapest option, and partly that the internet and cloud computing mean that a unique QR (Quick Response) code, datamatrix or serial number can be used to transmit, receive or store ‘smartness’ held at a location on the web (see Figure 8.2). RFID labels are being used is several end-user sectors (e.g. for registering library books), but the Wal-Mart-style mass market has not materialized.

COMPLEX SECURITY LABELS

Secure closures and ‘forgery-proof’ labels have been with us for a long time. Developments and improvements are constant because counterfeiters do not stand still. A leading global provider of security labels like Opsec for example uses unique IDs, codes and OVDs (Optically Variable Devices) to provide security, track-and-trace and aesthetic appeal. 

For protecting many kinds of assembly line product the company ATT has developed a security label called Seal Vector. ATT describes this as ‘a ubiquitous, highly secured and unique code, enabling authentication, identification and serialized traceability of a product or a component’.

Decipherable automatically on assembly lines or in the field with regular readers (for example, smart phones), the Seal Vector authenticator protects brand owners, products and consumers. ATT is also possibly the only label-related company to be named a ‘Technology Pioneer’ by the World Economic Forum in Davos.

BARCODES

People think of the barcode – if they think of it at all – as the ubiquitous product label that adorns every retail product and keeps supermarket checkout cashiers busy from morning to night. It was the first machine-readable label introduced just 50 years ago (see Figure 8.3), and it revolutionized retailing, warehousing and many other activities.

Barcode labels are almost always self-adhesive, and are printed using all usual technologies, including digital. Print precision is essential, and the impression must be scuff and humidity-proof. Various kinds of barcode verifier exist to enable the package or label converter to check the readability of the code. 

Barcode scanners (or readers) may be fixed (as in most supermarkets) or handheld/wireless as used for warehouse reading. The QR code is a development able to transmit a greater volume of information, and is used frequently for track-and-trace or for promotional marketing purposes. An illegible barcode label causes frustration or worse. It is the last transactional link to the end-user and its importance cannot be overstated.

THIN IS BEAUTIFUL

Wet-glue and in-mold labels have been getting thinner with improved die-cutting and cut-and-stack equipment. Die-cutting both these label types involves cutting right through one or many labels. For self-adhesive labels the problem is more delicate, since the process must cut through the face material and the adhesive without damaging the liner.

Progress in self-adhesive die-cutting means that laminates can now be made thinner without the risk of web breaks. All the leading labelstock producers are now offering thinner liners, but beware of web breaks either at the converting or application stages!

Montreal-based ETI Converting recently launched ‘Pellicut’, a patented technology enabling die-cutting with a regular die down to 0.48 mil (18 microns) polyester film at a speed of up to 750 ft/min. (225 m/min). The company reports that this technology works even with a 12 micron film but they prefer to leave a margin for safety in their claims. Apart from the advantage for the label converter of reduced roll changes, this development helps the converter to gain business with environmentally conscious brand owners and consumers.

THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION

Since the first commercially viable digital label presses became available in the 1990s, three different technologies have been developed. Globally dominating the market is HP Indigo, using a method known as electrophotographic liquid toner. Dry toner is the technology developed by Xeikon.

Third and (probably) fastest growing technology is digital inkjet.

HOW DO END USERS BENEFIT FROM DIGITAL LABEL AND PACKAGE PRINTING?

Among the first uses of digital labels were very short run personalized labels for weddings and similar occasions. Major brand owners took a decade or more to realize the potential of personalization as a marketing tool. The article on beverages describes examples of successful campaigns promoting soft drinks, beers and similar products.

End-users also benefit from the reduced time to market that is made possible by digital printing (and digital design and finishing). Manufacturers can better adapt to changing market opportunities and so satisfy consumer needs when labels can be designed and printed in a matter of hours without any fixed costs for plates.

The ability to produce short runs at affordable cost means manufacturers of all kinds of product can test consumer reaction by running product trials using a variety of label designs.

POST OFFICES AND PARCEL DELIVERY SERVICES

Many children used to collect postage stamps. Today’s stamps no longer hold the same fascination, even for philatelists, but printing and applying them are still big business worldwide. In a little-noticed revolution, self-adhesive postage stamps are rapidly taking over the world. People like you and me appreciate the gain in hygiene of not having to lick every stamp before using it. Government-owned or controlled printing houses also gain in efficiency by using roll-to-roll presses, usually still with intaglio printing.

However, other less secure print technologies are replacing line-engraved intaglio. In some countries, including France, digitally printed postage stamps have made their appearance. This enables cost-conscious official print houses to produce ‘special occasion’ stamps in limited quantities to mark a sporting event, a centenary or a royal wedding. A novel development in both US and UK is a ‘print-your-own-stamps’ service.

Many businesses apparently prefer to obtain official sanction to print out their own stamps rather than using a franking machine.

ECOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT

Environmental concerns affect every aspect of the label industry. Substrates, adhesives and inks are all concerned, as are production methods.

Brand owners, retail chains and militant consumer associations are asking their label suppliers searching questions. Below are some of the main concerns:

• Do label converters use environmentally friendly materials?

• Do they aim to reduce wasting scarce resources (fuel, water, energy…)?

• Can their products be recycled, if so, how?

• Do they respect regulations on environmental protection and on health and safety laws?

Providing good and reliable answers to these questions must continue to be a major concern for all actors in the label business. Labels, along with other forms of packaging, are not inherently eco-friendly. Consumer protection activists condemn ‘excessive packaging’ (often forgetting the purpose of the packaging which is to inform, protect and preserve). For many such activists, papermaking destroys forests, plastics pollute oceans, and inks, like adhesives, contain harmful chemicals. There is just enough truth in these allegations for the label industry to address them seriously.

Papers along with certain plastics, can be recycled; adhesives do not – except for a few very specific usages – contain toxic substances, and for packages foods, food-grade adhesives have been designed such that even when in direct contact with the product, there is no risk to health. Inks are a problem area. For Europe, REACH legislation has helped develop new generations of ink which do not use potentially dangerous chemicals. In the United States the Environment Protection Agency develops and enforces environmental regulations and, where these are not met, can issue sanctions. Partnerships with industries, businesses, and public organizations work to set goals including conserving water and energy, minimizing greenhouse gases, cutting toxic emissions, re-using solid waste, and controlling indoor pollution.

Consumer pressure (particularly in Germany and UK) has led to the use of low-migration inks for food labels. Finat is a leading force in the promotion and encouragement of the use of environmental management and audit systems like ISO 14001 in the label industry. The Netherlands-based label association has joined forces with its American counterpart TLMI to produce a Guide to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Finat environmental consultant Anne Gaasbeek puts it in these words: ‘LCA is a widely recognized and scientifically sound method of measuring environmental impact. It takes into account the complete life cycle of a product from the production of the raw materials to the final disposal of the product at the end of its life…It is being used in the self-adhesive industry as a marketing tool to steer product development and develop key performance indicators’.

Finat provides guidance documents and case studies to give label converters better understanding of LCA. As Finat General Manager Jules Lejeune has said, brand owners will increasingly come under pressure to show that they and their suppliers are ‘green’, and label converters in turn will be pressurized to show proof of their ecological credentials. For this, LCA will be an essential tool.

RECYCLING OPTIONS

Throughout the world, label converters and their suppliers are realizing that wasting resources costs them money. Herma is just one labelstock producer who recycles all its waste materials and monitors its use of water and energy.

The big stumbling block is liner. Recycling self-adhesive liner is possible, but problematical, due to the presence of residual adhesive and silicone.

Several plants exist, including one at Lenzing in Austria, to recycle liner which is then re-used as a raw material for paper production. The limiting factor is transport cost, since end-users must segregate used liner from their other waste, then wait for the truck which will load it up and take it to the recycling center. Environment consultancy Cycle4Green reckons this service is economic over anything up to 200 km from the recycling center.

While consumers and brand owners clamor publicly for more recycling of packaging, the reality is that when it comes to paying even a few cents extra, the tune changes. Head offices may set out recycling guidelines, but ‘front line’ packaging plants often ignore them. Ambitious pilot schemes exist to convert liner into pellets for incinerating to produce energy, and they worked well – but only when oil prices were sky-high. So unless there is a technological breakthrough, it looks as if most spent liner will continue to go to landfill.

POINTS TO REMEMBER

• Special label constructions extend the usefulness of the label in all end-user markets

• Digital technology in pre-press, printing and converting offers many new possibilities

• The consumer is increasingly influenced by sustainability, and ecological concerns.

• Recycling, particularly of spent liner, is an unsolved problem for the self-adhesive industry.

Barcodes have both a height and width, although there is normally no interpretive information in the height of the code. However, the height should be sufficient to allow the code to be read efficiently. The dark and light spaces in a barcode represent digitally encoded information, which can be ‘read’ by devices (barcode readers; barcode scanners), which scan a beam of light across the bars and so pick up signals from the various pulses of reflected light. The dark bars in the code absorb light while the white spaces reflect light, so providing a cost-effective method for automating data collection.

Inkjet printing has been around since the 1960s, but the first commercially viable roll-to-roll inkjet printer did not appear until twenty years later.

There are various types of inkjet but for today's label industry the so-called piezo technology (also known as drop-on-demand or D-O-D) is used almost exclusively. The principle is simple: the piezoelectric effect is used to force ink through a fine jet. As it falls, the ink forms droplets, and their size can be controlled by the strength of the electric impulse applied.

Critical parameters are firstly the distance between jet and substrate and secondly – as also applies with conventional print methods – the absorption characteristics of the face material. The weak point of all D-O-D print heads is that the ink in the heads tends to dry rapidly thus clogging any jet which is not in constant use. To counteract this problem slowly drying printing inks are often used, but this is of course a disadvantage when it comes to drying (or curing) the printed labels.

The steamy side of postage stamps

One of the more unusual recent initiatives from Danish label press manufacturer Nilpeter (in cooperation with Avery Dennison and UPM Raflatac) has been the development of special self-adhesive postage stamps. Philatelists – so it seems – dislike self-adhesive postage stamps because they cannot be steamed off envelopes.

Now thanks to a new pressure-sensitive laminate with a double layer of two different adhesives, and a combination press supplied by Nilpeter, Post Danmark can print self-adhesive stamps on paper or filmic face materials, safe in the knowledge that philatelists in Denmark and abroad will be able to steam off stamps to their heart’s content – another end-user group satisfied thanks to innovative use of self-adhesive technology.

Finat, TLMI and six other label associations have jointly defined the measures that global label industry associations, suppliers and converters are targeting to improve sustainability. These include:

• The promotion and encouragement of the use of environmental management and audit systems (ISO 14001, EMAS, LIFE) in the label industry

• Enhancing measures to inform, educate and support label producers in meeting current and future label environmental and sustainability targets

• Supporting the use of materials and schemes that encourage sustainable and renewable resources, such as FSC, PEFC or SFI

• Continued industry development of solutions to maximize cost-effective recovery and recycling of self-adhesive label stock waste

• Highlighting the development and use of thinner, lighter label materials

• Working towards further reduction in the amount of landfill waste and higher recovery and recycling rates

• Having a more prominent industry voice and input into global government, brand owner, packaging and related organizations that are currently impacting on environment and sustainability issues relating to labels and label usage.