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Europe's first quarter 2024 prices were static, followed by rises of between 80 and 100 euros in the second quarter for label grades. The third quarter is also opening on [...]

A survey of members of Germany's IPV (paper and film packaging association) paints a sobering picture. Thanks to increased costs for raw materials, energy and production, turnover has fallen noticeably. [...]

John Penhallow 09.05.24 For the past three months or so, it has been almost impossible to cross or even get around Paris because of disruption caused by the Olympic Games. [...]

Readers of L&NW, being well-traveled men and women, will mostly not need to be told where the Republic of North Macedonia is. But just in case one or two are [...]

The German research institute Carton Pro interviewed 5,000 consumers in five European countries to establish what they felt about packaging and the environment, and what other concerns ranked high in [...]

John Penhallow 02.26.24 Determining the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of label products involves grasping a bewildering array of standards, methodologies, and tools. FINAT, the European [...]

Just before Christmas 2021, the Brussels bureaucrats gave birth to yet another European directive on labeling (Number 2021/2117, in case you want to look it up), and at the end [...]

Despite a 10% fall in sales and profitability in January/June 2023, Italian paper manufacturer Fedrigoni is sounding remarkably cheerful. Explaining the result, CEO Marco Nespolo put it down to 'a [...]

Imagine you are a label and package printer, and you have just invested in a new label press. Suddenly you wake up one morning and find your country is being [...]

If your taste in wine is for Petrus or Leroy Musigny Grand Cru you may not know about bag-in-box (BiB) wines, which are quickly gaining in popularity. But the European [...]

The venerable German Institute for Economic Research has published its latest survey of the business climate in the packaging sector. Prospects for the coming months are bleak and have never [...]

Khmelnytskyi, in Western Ukraine, is the home of package printer Pryvatna Drukarnya. Before the war broke out in February 2022, the company was in touch with UK's GEW and was [...]

The Prinzhorn Group makes packaging. Lots ot it. It has plants in Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Moldavia and ex-Yugoslavia (oh, and a sprinkling in Germany, Greece and [...]

www.eticlass.com A few more weeks of drought, and we'll be able to wade across the river Rhine!' Eti'Class, in Colmar, Eastern France, has not waited for today's weather conditions to [...]

If you believe the economic gurus, European economies are in for a rough ride these coming months. With no end in sight to the war in Ukraine, energy prices going [...]

It seems almost too good to be true, but Lnterpack, Europe's biggest packaging show, will be back in May 2023 at its usual home in Dusseldorf. After a six-year break [...]

With elections coming up in France (municipal) and in Germany (regional), there is much talk about front-runners and who will gain if so-and-so pulls out. In the narrow web printing [...]

Germany is the industrial powerhouse of Europe, and for the German label and packaging sectors, things are not looking too bright. The latest business climate poll by the Institut fur [...]

After 112 days, the end of the strike at UPM's Finnish nulls gives Europe's label converters more elbow-room to worry about other things. UPM's welcome announcement implies that it's 'business [...]

Business, they say, should stay out of politics. But politics has a nasty habit of elbowing its way into business. The events in Ukraine have not only sown insecurity in [...]

As the pandemic seems to be easing, Europe's label converters have been saying quietly to themselves 'Well, that wasn't too bad.' But now another threat looms, and this time it's [...]

This month's article contains subject matter you may find hard to stomach, so if you're reading this over lunch, better put it aside until later. Still there? OK, what is [...]

It came as a nasty but not unexpected shock when on January 1 of this year, a new directive for packing fruit and vegetables came into force. Plastics are out, [...]

The United Kingdom is home to many unusual sports - caber tossing and whippet racing are two that spring to mind - but the British passion for darts is something [...]

Investing in Turkey can bring fat returns. It can also lose you your shirt. The Turkish economy has rallied reasonably well from the 2019-20 downturn, but its reserves are low. [...]

Nobody could accuse Germany's VPF of dominating the world market for labelstock. It does, however, rate highly for its innovative products and particularly for ecologically sustainable solutions. In the spring [...]

In the July/August issue of L&NW, Calvin Frost, author of Letters from the Earth, took a hard look at sustainability and recycling. He concluded that to get from here to [...]

An American president (not the present one) is reputed to have longed to find one-handed economists, because every time he sought expert advice they said 'on the one hand...but on [...]

The 'digital drupa' show, which closed on April 23. was hailed (by the organizers) as getting 'excellent feedback internationally, as demonstrated by the impressive final statistics.' Well, up to a [...]

The latest statistics from Europulp showed an unprecedented reduction in pulp stocked in Europe's ports in January, down 23% compared with January 2020. This is partly attributable to the long-term [...]

Heidelberg is Europe's best-known maker of printing machinery, and its 100% subsidiary Gallus is among the continent's leading manufacturers of narrow web presses. There was surprise in the industry when [...]

THIS IS NOT A RANKING OF ANY KIND, NOR IS IT MEANT TO BE ALL-INCLUSIVE. IF THESE COMPANIES SHARE ANYTHING IN COMMON, IT IS THAT THEY ARE EXPERIENCING GROWTH, PRODUCING [...]

With a market value of over $300 billion, Swiss-based Nestle is the world's biggest food company, and nearly all its products are packaged and labeled. So, when Nestle announces that, [...]

Readers of L&NW, who are mostly a well-traveled lot, will not need to be told about Belgium. It is that small, flat, triangular shaped country awkwardly placed between France, Germany [...]

Some people consider, wrongly, that Europe is the home of 'real' environmentalists. This idea took a knock recently when Flexomaid, a subsidiary of US-based Peripheral Advanced Design Inc., decided to [...]

Germany is often called Europe's industrial powerhouse, and clearly the power has been switched off for much of German industry this year. Exports of machinery in the second quarter 2020 [...]

Your correspondent recently visited Bidoit, a medium-sized label converter in Cognac. Bidoit is part of a group that recently changed its name to Inessence, and its industrial director, Sebastien Garaboeuf, [...]

Still groggy, Europe is picking itself up and starting to count the cost of the COVID-19 pandemic. The figures are so enormous they beggar belief. Germany, always the most tight-fisted [...]

The German business magazine Handelsblatt has no time for sensationalism. It was all the more surprising to read its recent analysis of Heidelberg, the German print machinery maker often described [...]

The annual Pharmapack show in January of this year hosted some 300 exhibitors, including around 50 directly connected with labels. It is easy to guess why label converters like the [...]

Readers of this column may remember the recent acquisitions by Italy's Fedrigoni group, now becoming a major European producer of labelstock. The company's security printing division is still waiting to [...]

Compared with Paris or Marseilles, the French town of Roubaix does not attract many tourists. It is in the heart of the northern rust belt, where coal mines and cotton [...]

This is the time of year when we are all urged not to look back in anger but forward in hope, putting our shoulders to the wheel, our best foot [...]

Paper, film, labels, and packaging are sensitive environmental issues worldwide, and Europe is no exception. Legally, all European Union governments are bound by the European Directive 94/62/EC of 20 December [...]

Every other press release you read today seems to announce a quantum leap, which usually turns out to be nothing more exciting than a slightly improved widget. Just occasionally, however, [...]

Readers of this column may remember that in conformity with European legislation, France recently introduced measures to combat cigarette smuggling by using security labels. The Imprimerie Nationale (now renamed IN [...]

With Labelexpo Europe on the horizon, you could expect Europe's label sector to be in a white heat of frenzied activity. Except that it isn't, or at least not in [...]

In the old days, all you needed to run a press was a high-school education and a set of spanners. Nowadays, at places where label gurus meet, you cannot throw [...]

In this column, your correspondent recently reported the death of IPEX, the packaging show that for many years was billed as Britain's answer to drupa. Now another UK show is [...]

When was the last time you read an article about Norway in the label trade press? Could be some time ago, so here is a quick briefing on one of [...]