Pryvatna Drutkarnya was forced to re-enter production in order to keep the business viable. Mikhail Gluhovski, CEO, wrote to Robert Rae (managing director of sales at GEW), and the British equipment manufacturer immediately offered to supply the equipment for free.
“Thanks to the goodwill of our European partners,” says Gluhovski, “We found an appropriate way to buy cardboard and consumables for new orders and to pay off debts at the same time. We are thankful to GEW and everyone who helped us.”
Asteria strikes again
In 2021, Asteria acquired UK’s CS Labels. Asteria Group was established in Gullegem, Belgium. This acquisition allowed it to increase its turnover to 170 millions euros. Asteria, with 17 factories located in Belgium and France, England, Germany (Finland), Estonia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Finland, Estonia, Denmark, and France, has made no secret of its ambition to acquire additional label converters.
Now, UK’s Berkshire Labels has become the latest addition to the Belgian group. Berkshire has three Mark Andy presses and an HP Indigo. There is also a newly acquired Bobst Digital Master 340 printer with a Mouvent Inkjet unit. Asteria confirmed that Paul Roscoe will remain as Berkshire’s CEO.
Ives Declerck, Asteria Group CEO, comments, “Berkshire Labels is a great company and great fit for the Asteria Group, and it will complement and expand our existing European and UK production sites. We look forward to supporting Paul and the team at Berkshire in their exciting growth plans.”
For the disabled, label converting is a job opportunity
Handiprint was founded in 2010 and has 201 employees. 150 of these are disabled. All employees are trained in more that 10 activities such as graphic design, digital printing, shape, signage, routing, and calendar production.
This year Handiprint is launching a new challenge: to become the first “adapted” company to invest in the roll label market. This initiative came to the notice of Marie-Anne Montchamp, the French Secretary of State for Solidarity and Social Cohesion, who welcomed the project, calling it “a tremendous step forward.”
Food packaging – use once, don’t throw away
Many empty bottles and plastic packaging left over from fast-food restaurants litter the streets and parks of Europe, but not all. The European Union’s lawmakers are taking the lead in reducing this pollution with a new law in force since January of this year. Restaurants are now restricted to using reusable packaging. The new law, although not unexpected, has drawn protest from some surprising quarters. Deutsche Umwelthilfe (Institute for Ecology) confirms its support for reusable packaging, but adds that all disposable packaging that is hazardous to the environment or the climate must be subject to a 20 cent tax. Imagine what fast food restaurants would think.
A major French fast-food chain with a Scottish name has a problem: their reusable cups, plates and plates are so appealing to customers that they often take them home. That saves time washing up.
From labels to envelopes
People don’t write many letters these days, and Elep is Belgium’s last remaining envelope manufacturer. The company purchased a Truepress Jet L350 printer from Screen to keep up with the changing winds. Says Elep’s CEO Yves Pfeiffer, “We wanted to invest in the latest technology, and the Screen digital inkjet press offers vivid, hard-wearing colors with low migration, which is increasingly important on the self-adhesive label market. Also, Screen’s European headquarters at Amstelveen are just 90 minutes away from our plant.”
Elep is looking to gain market share within the overcrowded segment of short-run, fast-delivery labels.
Swedish tea
Nordvalls Etikett AB, one of Sweden’s largest label converters, has acquired Germany’s Kölle Etiketten GmbH and is in the process of taking over ownership. Two years ago Nordvalls went international, acquiring a UK label converter, but Kölle is its first step into Europe’s biggest label market. Curiously, Kölle Etiketten’s main product is not labels but tea bags. However, like Nordvalls, Kölle is a family-owned and managed business, and third-generation CEO Phillip Kölle will continue to manage the German plant, teabags and all.
Bio-refining is a lucrative investment by a Belgian
Futtero is responsible for the design and operation of refineries that make polylactic acids (PLA), a synthetic plastic capable of replacing many petroleum-based ones. Its latest project is for a plant at Port-Jérôme-sur-Seine in France to produce 75,000 tons of PLA per year.
“We describe our polymer as the first ‘bio-renewable’ plastic,” says Futerro CEO Frédéric Van Gansberghe. “Derived from vegetable carbon, it can be easily and ecologically recycled to obtain a virgin polymer of the same quality as its first life cycle: this is a unique characteristic.”
The land plot for the project is currently vacant. However, 250 people will be employed by the refinery. This could have a significant impact on public opinion regarding plastics in packaging and labels. But don’t count your chickens just yet…
Holygrail 2.0 Initiative
European Brands Association AIM works on a solution that will improve and automate slow, expensive and laborious packaging recycling. Over 160 European companies have joined forces in the Digital Watermarks initiative “HolyGrail 2.0.”
It’s simple. Invisible codes that are about the same size as a postage stamp cover the majority of the packaging’s surface. Each code has information that facilitates automatic recycling. When packaging waste arrives at the sorting center a camera detects the “digital watermark” and sorts each item as appropriate (e.g. Sort by type of plastic, or usage food/nonfood. What could be more simple? It’s quite simple. For a start, it’s one of those brilliant ideas, like credit cards or barcodes, that can only get off the ground if lots and lots of people and companies decide to join in. And given that Europeans can’t yet agree on the number of holes in a salt shaker, digital watermarking is probably not for tomorrow. It is important to keep this in mind.
Substrate prices fall – at last
Flexible Packaging Europe (FPE) reports that most European substrate prices declined in the fourth quarter of 2022. BOPP films suffered the most dramatic drop, with a decrease of 15% in Q3 and Q4, while prices for most European substrates fell between 5-10%. Analysts believe this is due to sluggish sales and nervousness about the future. This has caused converters to reduce their stockpiles. The truth is that European substrate prices rose by 60% annually in 2022.
Europe’s labelstock markets reflect this trend: 4th quarter volumes were down 24%, the biggest year-on-year fall since FINAT’s records were started in 2003. Taking the year 2022 as a whole, European labelstock deliveries by producers were down by “only” 4.7% by volume.
According to a survey, most label converters plan to increase production in Q1/2023. FINAT however has retreated from its exuberant optimism. To quote its latest forecast, Europe’s label markets in 2023 must face: “Economic uncertainty…caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, rising energy and raw materials costs, rising interest rates and a looming recession.” Happy New Year, folks!