A clean sweep for self-adhesives

Europe’s self-adhesive label printers are getting to grips with a massive market that is ‘under the sink.’

The seemingly never-ending quest to provide housewives with miracle cleaners, serial-killer disinfectants, once-over wipes and breath-of-fresh-air room deodorizers by the household chemical sector is producing an ever-growing mass-market demand for self-adhesive labels.

Last year more than 260 square meters of labels were produced for the sector and demand is growing at a massive five per cent a year as the chemical manufacturers increasingly turn to preferring self-adhesives to wet-glue labels as the solution to several packaging problems that their products can pose.

‘The sheer versatility of a self-adhesive label is proving to be the big winner for our members,’ said Jules Lejeune, managing director of FINAT, the European trade association for the self-adhesive industry.

The full extent of the scope, scale and satisfaction of the household chemical market has been revealed in FINAT’s recently published ‘End-user Market Survey and Industry Report’.

Household chemicals have become an ever-expanding market as new products convince harried housewives of better (and easier) ways to clean. But often it is the impact that the label has that drives the sale – particularly so given the huge ranges of shapes of the bottles and containers.

The self-adhesive label can be tailored to fit whatever the shape and its adhesive can be varied to prevent a chemical reaction with the contents. There is increasing appeal for the ‘no label’ look while in the booming wet-wipes trade, the self-sealing self-adhesive label is a vital part of keeping the product moist and preventing vapor leakage.

Materials used range from paper through to increasing use of polyethylene and polypropylene substrates, depending on the nature of the container contents. On the supermarket shelves it is often a battle to catch the shopper’s eye and the graphic appeal of self-adhesive labels is now of growing importance.

Equally important where careless spillage of a chemical product could be dangerous, the self-adhesive label can be given a tactile finish that provides a firm grip in the hands of the user. ‘This alone can be a vital factor in our increasingly safety-conscious age,’ said Mr Lejeune.

The household chemicals market is dominated by major corporations who have developed global brands that require subtle changes to the label design to accommodate varying languages. This, in turn, dictates relatively short runs – but they might involve tens of millions of labels each – that can be easily changed on the filling lines. And this label printers’ market is so dynamic they are often asked to meet client’s delivery demands within 24 hours.

All the factors combine to keep the industry on its toes, which is in turn spurring more streamlined operations and innovative label solutions at the lower costs.

Mr Lejeune said: ‘The combined factors of end-user purchasing power and excess label converting capacity makes this a very challenging market, but for those companies that can meet the criteria, the possibility of long-term relations with their clients have been realized. Over recent years labeling in the household chemicals sector has seen a shift in emphasis from one of the lowest cost/lower quality image to one of cost efficiency/higher visual appeals.

‘New product and packaging designs aimed at capturing consumer attention have created new opportunities for self-adhesive labeling, particularly where it can provide added functionality that other technologies cannot,’ he said.