AIFEC publishes label market survey

AIFEC has presented the results of the label sector market survey showing the performance of label manufacturing companies during 2021 and their growth prospects for 2022.

With a 49% market share in terms of turnover and 21% in terms of the number of companies in the sector, the third four-month period of 2021 shows an 18% increase in turnover compared to the same period last year.

The results show a good performance of the market in what has been 2021 with an accumulated increase of 10.5% compared to 2020. At the same time, the sector shows an optimistic trend with regard to market performance in the coming months, with 37% stating that economic activity will improve growth rates and 41% that it will continue to grow as it has been doing so far. To facilitate the reading of the results by company size, the results have also been divided between companies with more and less than 3 million turnover, with a more positive trend among larger companies.

Despite market developments and growth prospects, there are serious concerns about widespread difficulties: paper shortages, line stoppages in glassine manufacturing plants, difficulties in container shipping and the strike of workers at UPM, one of the main suppliers of self-adhesive paper to the sector, in Finland.

In fact, this situation has resulted in supply delays ranging from a few days to several weeks (most commonly 6 or 8, sometimes much longer), according to AIFEC members, and constantly lengthening with frequent postponements of already confirmed orders.

As a consequence, AIFEC is collaborating with FINAT (the European association of the self-adhesive label industry) and the other European label industry associations to call on the leaders of UPM and Paperiliitto (the Finnish paper workers' union) to bring their negotiations to a successful conclusion, given the widespread "downward" impact on the European economy that this is having.

As seen during Covid, labels are part of the essential infrastructure of our modern societies. That is why the European associations representing more than 1000 label printers across Europe, covering more than 75 % of the total volume of the European consumer market for self-adhesive labels, have signed a consensus letter from FINAT calling for the situation to be normalised as soon as possible and for a return to the expected growth path.

Note: the original Spanish version can be found on AIFEC's website.