State of the Industry for tags and labels in package printing.

By Tom Polischuk

Out in time

Important questions on many people's minds are: What is in store? How long, how deep will this recession be and how will it impact the tag and label industry?

AWA recently released a report, "Labeling & Product Decoration Markets, Global Review 2009," in which it analyzed these markets. In this study, AWA says that the world label market, although reflecting the severe downturn in the world markets, fared better than other business sectors. According to the report, overall growth for labeling worldwide was 2.1 percent in 2008. However, this was down from more than 5 percent in previous years. For 2009, Reardon sees a further downward shift for North American markets. "Demand is expected to be softer in 2009 with a decline in North America at minus 2 percent or more," he states.