Business Management - Industry Trends

RFID is being adopted worldwide but with very great differences of emphasis as revealed by the IDTechEx Knowledgebase of more than 2,450 case studies in 92 countries. This is a tale of four, very different continents. North America is by far the largest market for RFID in value, number of tags, and number of case studies of RFID in action. That is almost entirely due to the U.S., with its massive orders for military RFID and widespread adoption in all sectors, Canada being a late follower. The primary applications differ greatly between the continents. However, the financial, security, safety sector dominates overall and this

Like any other technology, drying equipment for package printing continues to evolve. The industry changes rapidly and suppliers must keep up. The increased speed involved with today’s printing presses, driven by market demand, is one example of how drying equipment must evolve to keep up with the presses on which it is installed. Some press manufacturers, like Aquaflex (see sidebar, next page), have chosen to design and build their own drying systems. Others use dryers manufactured by OEMs. Whichever route you choose to go when purchasing new drying equipment, there are a variety of considerations you need to keep in mind including UV vs.

To say that both packaging design and materials have taken on vastly increased importance isn’t saying anything new. As advances in ink technologies and substrates occur, packaging becomes more than just a means to transport and display product—it becomes a critical tool to draw consumers to individual products. “The function of packaging is no longer limited to containing and protecting the product,” says Amir Veresh, VP marketing and business development, HumanEyes Technologies. “Packaging [has become] a main tool for product vendors to prevail in the sales-per-square-foot war.” One group of substrates is enjoying increasing popularity as a means to attract consumers. Holographic and

TAMPERE, Finland—UPM Raflatac, one of the world’s leading suppliers of pressure sensitive labelstock and RFID tags and inlays, has recently launched a label design contest in China. The Label Design Awards 2007 encourage Chinese designers to revolutionize the way labels are designed. “With the opening of our new state-of-the-art manufacturing centre in Changshu in spring 2007, we’re launching a new era in labelling,” says Elisa Nilsson, vice president of communications at UPM Raflatac. “To celebrate this, the Label Design Awards 2007 encourage Chinese designers to create an innovative product label for an imaginary home care or personal care product called New Era, using UPM

Global demand for packaging machinery is projected to expand 4.9 percent per year through 2010 to over $33 billion. Developing parts of the world will provide suppliers with some of the best sales opportunities going forward. Industrialization-related fixed investment activity, rising per capita incomes and growth in packaged goods production will all contribute to increases in equipment demand in these areas, most notably in Asia and Eastern Europe. China will record the largest gains of any national market, surpassing Japan to become the second largest market in the world behind the U.S. Sales conditions are also expected to be strong in India, Russia, Mexico,

BOUCHERVILLE, Quebec—L’Oréal judges the ETI technology essential for the production of its “back-to-back labels” in a context of cost reduction and environmental care strategy. L’Oréal recognizes that ETI equipment users represent the best opportunity to manufacture L’Oréal’s new patented labels. The multinational has developed a system to reduce the wastage of the liner for the label application process. The system consists in having two webs, one on each side of the glassine liner. This way the same liner is used twice in the label application process, thus cutting out the waste by half. In accordance to L’Oreal’s cost reduction objectives, the combination of ETI

Color matching is a shady business. The slightest difference between the color on the label and the shade of the contents can result in unhappy customers and lost future business, which is why self-adhesive label printers take so much time and trouble to ‘get it just right.’ “Color matching is probably the most difficult part of our job,” said David Harrisson, president of FINAT, the international trade association for the self-adhesive label industry. Long gone are the Henry Ford days of having ‘any color you want providing it is black’. Today’s consumer lives in a colorful world and demands the exact shade of colour

Attention RFID converters: clear your schedules now, because it looks like you’re going to be a bit busy for the next 10 years. Independent consultant IDTechEx predicts RFID technology will eventually become as ubiquitous as the barcode, and converters have the potential to play a more pivotal role in production. A report by the organization projects as early as 2016 that RFID “will mostly be printed directly onto packaging and products, possibly in the hundreds of billions, and [will use] special electronic inks.” Back here in the present, with the technology still in its early stages, there is no standard route to involvement for

As we head into mid-2006, we embrace the many positive changes in the smart label industry. The ratification of the Class 1 Generation 2 ultra-high frequency (UHF) protocol has provided a long-awaited UHF stateside standard. As the EPCglobal organization is progressing to make this a global standard, there are now only a few countries left that have yet to adopt this standard. In the past year, major progress has been made to overcome the RFID issues, which fluids and metals have caused. This will accelerate the ability to implement RFID into these products and increase the demand for high volumes of smart labels. High yields

Part One: Low Cost Entry — Wrapping Electronics RFID is an important enabling technology that appears in an ever-widening variety of applications. In the past, the emergence of barcodes helped create a large label market that lasted for one or two decades before people figured out how to print the barcodes directly on to packaging and products. So, today only 5-15 percent of barcodes appear as labels. However, there are now so many barcodes required—up to 10 trillion yearly—that even the minor percentage still taking the form of labels constitutes a substantial business. This label business will endure because the labels perform special functions,