Trade Trends- August 2008

Awards not always the answer
When last I interviewed D&D Global’s Drago Zorec in his upbeat Richmond premises it was barely big enough to contain all the awards the firm had garnered over the years. As Australia’s most trophied trade house, D&D was in a class of its own.

Sad to hear that the far sighted Zorec now concludes there is little future for the quality end of the business, having presided over the liquidation of his front running operation in Melbourne last month.

Is digital the total answer?
At the risk of being labelled a luddite, I hesitantly hark back to my blessed generation when it comes to the digital world’s online shopping frenzy. Fact is that, generally speaking, the uptake of the internet in the over 60s is relatively slow and low. While this can of course be termed a generalisation, I don’t believe there to be a virtual army of greyheads burning up bandwidth as they surf the latest from the often confusing eBay site or the upwards of 20 titles on Cataloguecentral.com.au.

Hence for this significant market segment the humble catalogue has never been more potent a sales force. As someone who knows better than I recently said, “If out of sight is out of mind, closing your internet browser and powering down may leave your mind wandering, whereas the dog-eared pages of a catalogue can keep tempting you from the prime position of the corner of the coffee table”.

Handy Andy cleans up
Label press maker, Mark Andy president, Paul Brauss is jubilant that of the 32 labels awarded in the narrow web category of the 2008 Excellence in Flexography Awards, half were run on Mark Andy and Comco presses.

Paragon Label, a printer of prime and luxury labels for wine, gourmet food, health and beauty aids, led the category, bringing in seven wins, including two gold honours. Other notable winners in the narrow web category include Smythe Companies, which brought in two awards in the Screen/Coated class, Insulair/Georgia-Pacific received two nods in the Process/Paperboard division, and Quality Assured Label Inc brought home the Gold in the Process, Metalised category.

Drupa promise not yet fulfilled
Seemed wherever one turned at drupa this year, there was another new inkjet machine dedicated to label printing. Names such as Atlantic Zeiser, Heidelberg, Mimaki and Xennia spruiked the long awaited inkjet technology breakthrough. Major impact, they said. Revolutionise, some even went so far as to claim.

The jury, however, is out on whether the quality of image can be the subject of enthusiasm. One industry pundit crystal balled the trend with, “I think inkjet will overtake the conventional HP and Xeikon machines for labelling, but not for another couple of years yet”.

Labels & Labeling magazine’s Andy Thomas had similar views. “If inkjet is not yet in the league of producing prime labels, perhaps there are new applications where the hourly cost of current digital presses is too expensive for some end users to contemplate going digital, (such as) full colour logistics labels or box-end labels which could show photographs of the shoes in the box
or a photograph/color coding of what’s in a pallet?”

Light up, get lucky
Imagine you’re browsing through a liquor store somewhere in Romania (the mind begins to boggle…) when you’re suddenly confronted by a row of Ursus beer bottles all lit up like Christmas trees.

If you should find yourself in this unlikely situation, you’re witnessing the emergence of an LED smart packaging solution which can be applied to bottles, cartons and other forms of packaging. After four years of development and testing, its inventors say it’s set to revolutionise the global packaging market and provide powerful new marketing and promotional opportunities. The LightPad range from Cognifex allows the contents of glass and plastic bottles and other types of containers and packaging to be illuminated via tiny electronic illumination devices attached to the outside of the packaging; for example, in the recess of a standard beer bottle base. The illumination effects can be in a range of colours, made time variable and activated in a variety of ways.

And if that weren’t enough, it seems the devices can be triggered by sound, allowing synchronised flashing of bottles to the beat of the music in a night club, and changes in ambient light levels can also be used as a trigger, so bottles can illuminate when, say, a cupboard door is opened or when a bottle of beer is removed from a multipack.

And while my Romanian is somewhat rudimentary, I believe the Ursus people are upbeat. Someone there is said to have indicated something to the effect that the modern LightPads “reflect our continuous wish to evolve and adapt to the premium market worldwide”.

So the next time a bottle of VB warbles Waltzing Matilda at you in a bottle shop nearby, remember, you read it here first.

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