Conducted by market research company LPC Inc, the sixth edition of the FINAT Radar shows that self-adhesive labels will continue to dominate the narrow web market, with digital print playing an increasingly important role.
President Thomas Hagmaier said, ‘Over two-thirds of brand owners surveyed indicated that they would not migrate away from self-adhesive decoration to another technology in the coming year – evidence that gives us cause to believe that our self-adhesive labels are still versatile, top performers in today’s complex market, and that there is some quietening-down in the market expansion of the new technologies.’
He continued, ‘The tremendous leaps that have been made in the digital printing arena are, of course, bringing flexibility for high-quality short-run print to the label industry too, and brand owners indicated they expect to procure 5% more digital print solutions in the coming year.’
Overall, brand owners surveyed indicated their expectation that total demand for labels in 2017 would increase by over 3% – a slight decrease on 2016 expectations. Western European label converters continue to claim the largest share of the market, but over a third of brand owners indicated that they are looking at sourcing labels from other areas, mostly from Eastern Europe.
