Report on AWA Seminar: Label Release Liner Issues, Opportunities

Every year during the busy autumn season of packaging industry shows and conferences, the release liner industry takes a day out to analyze its present, and its future, in pressure-sensitive labeling. It was Europe's turn this year to host the AWA Label Release Liner Industry Seminar, and a healthy number of participants, from every level of the value chain, convened in Brussels in late September.

Considerable dichotomy surrounds label release liner today. Its quality and performance are not in question—as leading brand owners confirm through their continuing preference for pressure-sensitive labeling for premium products. Equally, release liner—whether paper- or film-based—is fully recyclable and sustainable. It is, however, at the end of its working life that label release liner finds itself lacking an appropriate and unified modus operandi for transition back into the processing chain for recycling and re-use.

Optimistic outlook

Opening the Label Release Liner Seminar, AWA Alexander Watson Associates' President and CEO, Corey Reardon, confirmed that business in the roll-label sector "continues to be optimistic." Globally, growth in the use of release liner across all its market segments averaged out at 4 percent in 2012. The Asia Pacific region showed the greatest growth, at 7.1 percent, but this is a significant slowing down from prior years. South America and—new arrivals in the growth markets, Africa and the Middle East—both evidenced growth rates of 4.5 percent, while North America, at 2.1 percent growth, and Europe, at 1.9 percent, both just managed to match approximate GDP growth.

Issues and innovations

Among its broad-ranging activities, UPM-Kymmene is the world's largest manufacturer of release base papers. Mikko Rissanen, product manager, Paper Business Group, examined the global trends impacting release liner, their implications for the business and its technology, and product and sustainability issues and innovations. The scarcity of some raw materials, particularly platinum, and the resultant high costs, he showed, continue to create problems across the value chain, as do the issues of sustainability, global competition, and market instability and volatility. Material innovation, renewability and recyclability, and a cost-efficient production process and supply chain are the key challenges for the future, he said.

Label maker's viewpoint

"A label maker's perspective" on label release liner was provided by Alan Hazlewood, group quality and technical support manager for application technology provider, Skanem AS. This company focuses on primary product labels, with 99 percent of its production in pressure-sensitive labels. Overall, he said, the company is "very happy with the quality of today's liner. Our liner mix is roughly 53 percent honey glassine, 41 percent white glassine, and 6 percent film (of which 70 percent is PET 30)."

Analyzing the major challenges facing the label end users, he underlined that "my market is very, very conservative—it reacts in a very slow way," and three areas at the user level create challenges to change—brand management, purchasing management, and operations management. Still, the major change drivers in Skanem's experience are related to net price improvement and environmental/sustainability impact. For on-press running along with high-speed, reliable label application, Skanem finds that glassine liner is the answer, with film liners providing solutions in specific market niches, but with some performance "watch outs."

Recycling must, Hazlewood said, "be disciplined and stand up economically." The fact that matrix waste is located at the end of an extended supply chain makes achieving this mission difficult.

The option of linerless label materials is one with which Skanem has experience, but while there are many indicative savings to be made by taking this route, it has its limitations because of label shape restrictions. Hazlewood's prognosis is that price parity across the release base options is opening up competition, with market-specific performance requirements and sustainability issues playing an increased role.

Laminator's viewpoint

Moving from the viewpoint of a label converter to that of a laminator, Robyn Buma, global procurement director, paper, for Avery Dennison broadened the competitive context to include glue-applied labels and the rate at which their users switch to pressure-sensitive. The economics, and the requirement for very high-speed application are the defining factors. "Sustainability in the pressure-sensitive label industry is a slow trend," she said. "Europe is much further ahead in this respect than North America, and, additionally, there is no 'pull' from the end user market. Our industry needs to take a position."

Technical wizardry

Success in the release liner industry is very much dependent on technical mastery; and seminar delegates heard two in-depth stories on this topic. Geoffrey Debaugnies, senior application engineer and technical service professional from Dow Corning discussed the company's new Ultra Low Platinum Advantage release coatings on its Acti-V™ glassine and SCK release papers. The coating "offers a competitive formulation, plus high-speed performance, for price-sensitive bulk roll-label applications," said Debaugnies. He added that, comparing the coating and Acti-V release base to current standard constructions, "platinum could be reduced by over 75 percent."

Designing adhesives for optimal release performance was the topic addressed by Henkel's Ingrid Brase, market segment director, pressure-sensitive adhesives. Her paper, jointly written by colleague Pete Walter, described an in-depth technical study in which ten hot melt adhesives of varying chemistries were evaluated in conjunction with a single UV-cured silicone release formulation. She went on to outline a resultant case study, and the summarized the outcome. Her context was the requirement to deliver a label that the end user can efficiently dispense—and her conclusion showed that it is essential to balance label performance needs with release requirements.

Heineken's viewpoint

The seminar agenda also featured a paper from a global label end user. Dennis Bakx, global category buyer packaging materials, for Heineken Global Procurement, focused from a brand owner's viewpoint on sustainability and recyclability in beverage labeling. Heineken is committed to "brewing a better" future through sustainability, with four particular priority areas in focus: water, CO2, sourcing, and responsible consumption. What, then, are his requirements for release liner? With an emphasis on film liner, Heineken is looking for reductions in liner thickness—or, indeed, linerless labelstock; bio-based and biodegradable plastics; the delivery of overall environmentally-responsible performance; recycling and re-use; and eventually, a global supply-chain-wide approach.

A silk purse from a sow's ear

The question as to how you can actually make a silk purse out of a sow's ear is one that is familiar to Calvin Frost, CEO of Channeled Resources Group and long-time campaigner for responsible use of valuable materials—including used label release liner. Frost's presentation pulled no punches, and addressed participants directly. "Why don't you force the paper industry to use a percentage of recycled release liner fiber in new release liner?" he asked. There were, he said, 360-400,000 tons of spent paper release liner available for repulping and 20,000 tons of PET/PP spent liner for reprocessing in Europe in 2012. "And how much did we repulp and/or re-melt in Europe in 2012? Under 30,000 tons. That's about 7 percent of available spent liner."

He illustrated the various ways in which the physical logistics of waste packaging, transportation, pre-processing, shipment and delivery can be, and are already, achieved efficiently. His call to action was for an industry forum to focus on change in the industry in this critical area of activity, to really "define the problem and provide solutions," Frost said, adding that the key is to have them "embraced by the top people in the industry."

Linerless today and tomorrow

In one sense, the day's agenda could be summarized as "Linerless – or less liner?"—and this was the title of the paper presented by Mike Cooper, business development director of linerless labeling experts Catchpoint Ltd. Illustrating pressure-sensitive labeling's penetration into key end-use segments in Europe and North America, he highlighted the fact that food and beverage represent the lowest penetration—yet the largest markets. Linerless labels could help, Cooper showed, delivering a summary of activity in the label printing, diecutting, and application arena. While acceptance of the improved performance level of linerless labels has so far been slow, there is certainly evidence of real innovation here.

Concentrating on one of those advances, Roelof Klein, commercial manager of the Maan Group—specialists in glueing and surface treatment technologies—showed how his company's Inlinerless system can print, silicone coat, and adhesive coat linerless label material, ready for application, in one flexible production run and, using groundbreaking cutting and marking technology, create an increased variety of label shapes, and optimize reliability on the labeling line. pP