DCM states growing label market interest

News of this growing trend comes after the French manufacturer reported successful initial sales of its new solventless laminator, Laminastar 4, which was introduced a K’2013.

The Laminastar 4 was shown for the first time at the plastics industry tradeshow last October, with several machines sold around the world.

This includes two in Europe, to flexible packaging converters in France and Germany, as well as one in the US and one in the Middle East.

The Laminastar 4 features a coating unit without any mechanical elements and with a ‘true’ sleeve-type adhesive transfer cylinder for quick coating width change. As a standard, the machine is built in 870mm, 1,070mm and 1,370mm widths.

The US sale is supported by DCM’s showroom in Wisconsin, where a shrink sleeve forming machine, a sleeve cutting machine and a slitter rewinder are on show, and will be joined by a Laminatstar 4 later in 2014.

DCM said it is seeing growing interest from the label industry in its converting machines, including laminators, slitter rewinders, sleeve forming units and even narrow web gravure printing presses, as label converters look at flexible packaging as a way to diversify their products and markets.

DCM president Bertrand Fara said: ‘Label converters traditionally use narrow web equipment, and DCM has developed a full range of narrow web machines to help them to move easily, technically, from labels to the flexible packaging business.

‘If you consider that short and medium runs are always a headache dealing with the flexible packaging industry, the market is potentially good for label converters who decide to invest in this direction.’