Pressure sensitive labels: nearly 50% of release liner use

Packaging Solutions

The AWA Label Release Liner Industry Seminar, held in Chicago, brought together nearly 100 delegates from across the value chain to discuss and update their knowledge, and to network with peers and industry experts.

This year’s seminar offered an in-depth programme. A major feature was a focus on the key issues facing the label release liner segment today – particularly linerless labeling developments and release liner recycling.

Opening the seminar, Corey M Reardon, president and CEO of AWA Alexander Watson Associates, provided an overview of the global release liner market as a whole – one of the core verticals in the company’s market research and consulting activities – with a focus on the fact that 49% of the total market is consumed in pressure sensitive label applications.

Dan Muenzer, vice president Marketing, Constantia Flexibles, followed with an insightful and comprehensive presentation on labeling trends, posing the key question: ‘Is this label thing ever going to slow down?’ Based on AWA’s market data and his own assessment, pressure sensitive labeling using a release liner is still, he said, ‘winning’; but shrink sleeves, flexible packaging, and direct to container print – among other technologies – are challenging the status quo, and expanding the packaging and labelling options for brands. Creative solutions enhancing shelf appeal and personalised consumer features in packaging and labeling are today driving continued growth across all technologies.

Linerless labeling technologies are now viewed as a real opportunity by many laminate producers. The growing use of new thin film technology and associated equipment developments are together creating and supporting a viable ’pathway to linerless’. The industry’s logistics, efficiency, waste footprint, shelf appeal and overall sustainability will benefit from the innovations and progress made in linerless labelling over the last 12 to 18 months.

It is estimated by AWA, in a new Linerless Labeling AWAreness Report to be published later this year, that linerless technology is soon to represent 4 to 5% of the total pressure sensitive laminate market. The panel of experts presenting during this session shared this assessment of the growing level of penetration.

According to Corey Reardon: ‘In addition to the threat and competition from alternative labeling and packaging technologies, the issues around release liner recycling and end of life solutions for release liner in the pressure sensitive label segment are the most critical factors facing the industry today’. He added: ‘Although the issues surrounding release liner waste are not necessarily directly affecting the success of pressure sensitive labeling today, it is absolutely essential that the industry understands what is happening with regard to recycling; and what the options are. To be in possession of fact based knowledge and current information on volumes and recycling rates is critical if industry participants are to be proactive in the future and be able to benchmark their activity.’

The release liner recycling session and discussion was supported by four expert presentations, providing an overview that linked the entire value chain, from paper supplier through pressure sensitive laminator, to label converter and end user. Jaakko Rautalahti, head of product development, UPM Label, Pack & Release, opened the session from the perspective of a leading release base paper supplier, highlighting recycling and the attendant responsibilities of the supply side of the industry. He emphasised current practice, where liner waste is often used in mixed waste streams, but proposed an optional alternative closed loop model, which would be more sustainable in the long term.

Renae Kulis, senior director, Global Leader of Sustainability for Avery Dennison, followed with an enlightening presentation focused on sustainability and its purpose, and on her company’s sustainability goals and the foundations of the thinking on sustainability. She shared Avery Dennison’s 2025 goal to eliminate 70% of matrix and liner waste from the value chain and supported the concept of a closed loop recycling model, using old liner to make new liner, and thus, in essence, creating a circular economy or a circular value chain for paper release liner.