Label makers turn to drink

Bottled drinks are big business – the world is drinking the equivalent of 200,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools from bottles and other containers a year. And it is into this wet and wonderful world that Europe’s self-adhesive label manufacturers are hoping to make a big splash by increasing their share in the all important product decoration market.

At the moment, self-adhesive labels have a seven per cent share of the billions that are applied to bottles and similar containers each year – or put another way, they are producing labels that, cumulatively, would form a 290 square kilometer carpet, big enough to cover the entire city of Marseille.  

FINAT, the European trade association for self adhesive label manufacturers, sees the world’s beverage container market as a lucrative area for expansion, as drinks container manufacturers come to appreciate the advantages of self-adhesive labels over other forms of product decoration.

The trade association has just produced its ‘End-user Market Survey and Industry Report’, a veritable Bible for all connected with the worldwide drinks industry and the labels it requires.

‘Our members have been doing a tremendous amount of work to aim their labels at this massive market and there have never been so many advantages as there are today for our forms of product decoration,’ said Jules Lejeune, FINAT’s managing director.

‘Recent advances in printing techniques enable self-adhesive labels to convey much more information than the traditional wet glue label or the moulded bottle could ever provide, and they enhance the eye-appeal of a product that increases sales of bottled drinks.

‘A good illustration of the sort of sales appeal self-adhesive labels can create is the image of an ice cold drink, the bottle dripping with condensation droplets, on a hot summer’s day. Few thirsty customers could resist a purchase. Today’s printing techniques make it perfectly possible to reproduce that effect – and containers would literally flow off the shelf.

‘Similarly, with today’s “no-label” look, the appearance of a crystal-clear drink can be enhanced simply by using a see-through substrate,’ he said.

Other tactile printing techniques can reproduce Braille onto labels to prevent blind people drinking the wrong liquid and the same process can create labels with a ‘grip’ that prevent bottles slipping from sweaty or greasy hands.

‘The undoubted attributes of self-adhesive label techniques lend themselves particularly well to the growth areas of the world’s drinks markets,’ Mr Lejeune said.

‘There are seven main segments in that market – soft drinks, beers, bottled water, fruit juices, wines, spirits and others – which together produce a massive 500 billion liters of drink with demand growing at 2.7 per cent a year. And the fastest growing of these are the bottled water, sports and energy drinks and nutritional health drinks whose sales can benefit particularly well from the novel appearances self-adhesive labels can provide.’  

‘Beer, alone, probably presents the highest potential for self-adhesive labeling and the present fashionable demand for premium ‘designer’ beers is a perfect example of where a self-adhesive label of high technical quality can further enhance the product’s appeal.’ Mr Lejeune added.

Time and time again, the report’s authors found that drinks manufacturers turned to self-adhesives to enhance the trendiness of the product, particularly with the ‘alcopops’ much favored by young women. But the labeling method was just as appealing to producers of quality ciders, sparkling wines and premium, high-value spirits where holograms, security threads and other anti-theft devices can be built into the label.

The every-day advantages of self-adhesive labels are many, ranging from the versatility of their shape and design to the variety in film finishes, such as tactile, glossy or matt effects.  The labels are easy to handle and apply and for returnable multi-trip bottles, they are easier to remove. In markets where product appearance and image is important self-adhesives’ special effects, including the ‘no label’ look, are an important benefit.

They also have the benefit of a low cost of production for small runs and attaching techniques require less maintenance and clean-up than, say, wet glue labels.

These arguments have already attracted some of Europe’s major drinks containers manufacturers who this year are changing their old-fashioned wet glue labeling plants to thousand-bottles-a-minute self-adhesive lines, with up to 15 per cent higher efficiency and faster changeovers that will dispel the notion that self-adhesives are only for short run and niche applications.

Many drinks these days are multinational, on sale across the world, and labels may be required in many languages. In holiday spots, there may be hundreds of thousands of customers speaking many languages and, where important statutory information has to be provided, self-adhesive label ‘books’ can provide the details.

The choice of self-adhesive labels can also help drinks manufacturers with their growing problems of recycling. Some label firms have produced labels for returnable glass bottles that can withstand 15 or more trips through the sterilization process, while the use of plastic substrates for labels on plastic bottles prevent no recycling problems whatsoever.

FINAT’s president, David Harrisson, said: ‘Our members are targeting the drinks market because they believe they have something to offer that will increase a drinks company’s sales and it is interesting that almost 80 per cent of the beverage companies we interviewed for our survey believed that the use of self-adhesive labels will continue to grow.’