Challenges and Opportunities

The threat from new world competitors goes beyond labor issues. With the tag and label industry already vying with growing demands for sachets, pouches, and other direct-printed packages, the real rivalry will come from fledgling supplier bases that produce these materials with newer technologies.

Reardon explained, “New market economies are opening up around the world [and] … are creating new supply bases for packaging, whether for cartons, other containers, or labels. Those new supply bases are, in many cases, working with newly-purchased state-of-the-art equipment and related consumables, and their output is of a quality comparable to that of the established markets in North America and Europe. Continents such as Asia—where technological know-how is strong—and the new consumer markets in Central and East Europe, particularly Russia, are now successfully exporting their narrow-web print offerings and are likely to compete on price in international markets. This is a serious threat for western producers, where margins are already under pressure and raw material prices are rising.”