Indian label market set to grow by 20 percent

The Indian label market is set to grow by 20 percent in the next two to three years, Prof P V Narayanan, of the SIES School of Packaging in Mumbai, told the world’s self-adhesive label trade association at the FINAT World Congress in Berlin.

‘Over the last ten years India has seen its retail economy fortunes soar at ten to 15 per cent growth rates annually, to a present value of between $180bn and $230bn, and this is likely to continue over an extended period,’ Prof Narayanan said.

This growth is reflected in the expansion of its label printing industry, which last year teamed up with FINAT and VskE, the German trade association, to create the Indian-European Label Exchange, which helps set India on a target of printing at least three billion square meters of labels a year by 2009-10.

By comparison, the whole of Europe produced 5.2bn square meters of labels in 2006.

Prof Narayanan said: ‘This trend indicates that India will double its 3.2 percent of world market share to 6.3 percent in square meter terms by that time.’

Talking of the Indian-European Label Exchange, which was formed last year, Prof Narayanan said that three factors came into play – curiosity which created a lot of interest in his local market, which led to the opportunity to meet and explore possibilities which in turn promised added value to both markets.

Prof Narayanan told the Congress the business-to-business matchmaking event had been well received by the members of LMAI and should be repeated on a biannual basis.