Label Release Liner: Looking to the Future

AWA Label Release Liner Industry Seminar identifies challenges and opportunities.

Sustainability, raw material costs, and the relative use of paper- and film-based liners were the topics which characterized the industry forum that is the annual AWA Label Release Liner Industry Seminar. This year’s event attracted more than 80 participants from the full breadth of the label release liner supply chain—from end users and label converters to raw material suppliers, laminators, equipment manufacturers, and recyclers.

Opening the proceedings, Corey M. Reardon, president and CEO of AWA Alexander Watson Associates, reviewed the current market for release liner on pressure-sensitive labelstock—a market which, he said, continues to dominate global release liner demand, with a 51 percent share of total usage.

“Growth is slowing worldwide, however, to about 4 percent,” says Reardon, “with only China and India showing high CAGR prospects (9.24 percent and 11.53 percent, respectively) in the medium term. Competition to pressure-sensitive technology from other labeling formats and flexible packaging, as well as the overall challenges regarding environmental/sustainability issues, together represent tangible threats.” Despite these challenges, AWA’s research projects consistent growth for release liner pressure-sensitive labeling in the medium term.

Film liner focus
While paper release base still dominates across all market segments—especially pressure-sensitive labelstock—annual demand for film-based labelstocks is growing, “at multiples of that for paper-based labelstocks,” says Reardon. The growing interest in film liner is driven by its characteristic strength and smoothness, which deliver high performance on press and on the label application line.

Reardon singled out a major emerging trend in the label market’s infrastructure: the growing popularity of in-line silicone coating and lamination of labelstocks alongside the printing, diecutting, and matrix-stripping processes.

Market dynamics
Some of the other label market trends highlighted in Reardon’s presentation were the continuing control of market dynamics by the major retailers; shorter, more frequent label runs and shorter lead times; reduced inventory levels; more frequent changes in design and branding, and changing/reducing product life cycles; and the need for cost transparency on the part of label suppliers—a key requirement for the major retailers and brand owners.

A global perspective
Next on the agenda was a label producer’s view of the world of release liners from CCL Label’s Business Development Director, Kari Virtanen, who presented a particularly detailed view of the label release liner market geographically and by end use. In Europe, he confirmed, paper—particularly glassine—dominates, as it does in Canada and in Mexico, but in the United States, PET is much in evidence, with calendered kraft paper also in common use. In Asia and South America, paper remains the preferred release base. Wherever they are used, PET film liners are now thinner than ever, and they present practical challenges for press minders in many areas, including diecutting, web tensioning, ghosting, embossing, and static electricity.