FINAT Research Shows Cooling Europe Label Market After last month’s report of slowing demand for self-adhesive label materials in 2018, FINAT’s latest edi- tion of the 6-monthly market monitor, the FINAT RA- DAR, confirms signs of a cooling label market. Last year’s consumption of self-adhesive label mate- rials in Europe amounted to a total of just under 7.5 billion square meters, an increase of 1.4 percent on 2017. Last year continued the signs of slowdown that became evident in the course of 2017, when the mar- ket grew by 4.7 percent, below the average 5 percent plus annual growth rates that had been recorded since the bottom of the last recession in 2011.
For the first time since the beginning of the decade, there was a mixed picture of label volume demand growth rates across Europe.Whilst leading markets like Germany and France recorded modest growth rates below 0.5 percent, several southern and eastern EU markets continued to achieve above average growth rates between 2.5 percent and 4 percent,while emerg- ing markets in Russia and Ukraine recorded strong growth numbers in excess of 6 percent. By contrast, at opposite ends of the continent. The UK and Turkey recorded negative growth of more than 1 percent and 4.5 percent respectively, although towards the end of 2018 and beginning of 2019, there was a pre-Brexit stocking effect in the UK leading to a rebound of labelstock demand. Healthy Underlying Factors Given the strong historic correlation of labelstock demand and GDP development, the slowdown of the label industry is a significant indicator of eco- nomic uncertainty, after years of macro-economic recovery. Nevertheless, the prospects for the self-ad- hesive labels and narrow-web packaging industry remain healthy.
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4 July 22, 2019 Flexo Market News
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