Push-Pull Strategies

Those solutions may have to spring from a little technological soul-searching on the part of converters. Dochstader says cost pressures have spurred a "technological re-focus" in which no job or production method escapes scrutiny. "Everyone is holding the technology they have under the microscope," she says. As a result, a label's original substrate may be replaced with a thinner film, a hot foil element may be replaced with more inexpensive technology, or a screen-printed label may be transitioned to flexo.