What are shrink sleeves?
Shrink labels can be found on all supermarket shelves, on cans, bottles and jars, attracting consumers to products as diverse as baby food, air fresheners, shampoo, and shaving cream. The shrink label can best be described as a film label printed on an oriented plastic sheet or tube, which, when heat is applied to the label, conforms - or shrinks - to the contour of the container. Flexography printing (flexo) is the dominant technology for long-run shrink sleeve printing. This requires longer set-up times prior to printing and a lower resolution and quality of print compared to offset lithography or digital printing.
Short-run shrink sleeve market potential
The shrink sleeve market, a sub-set of the label market, has been identified as a growth area, with projections running as high as 7% per year, compared to approximately 4% seen in the film label and flexible packaging market. The shrink sleeve market is estimated to be worth about $3 billion world-wide. Some $500 million is in short- to medium-run jobs that are ideal for digital printing. This relatively new market is dominated by a small number of companies in each region - and tend to be medium-to-large corporations with multiple sites. As in many new markets, a large portion of the equipment, products and substrates are being developed by these companies to meet their new emerging needs.
Unique production lines call for innovative solutions for production and inspection, and drive the diversity that can be seen on production sites and the high customization that the manufacturing process reflects.
Industry experts and researchers show a growing need for short-runs of shrink labels for the following reasons:
- Reduced supply chains - holding smaller inventories
- Private labels are gaining popularity
- Product samples
- Prototyping for market testing
- Targeted products that address smaller segments with more focus
- Greater requirement for high color quality in shrink sleeves
- Most sleeves are made from a width of 100-300mm material, producing a 50-150mm (double layer) "lay-flat" which fits the digital format
- Increased demand for runs of 10,000-20,000 sleeves (approximately 1500 - 4000 meters long, depending on sleeve size)
Short-run applications
Shrink sleeves are particularly suited for:
- Container designs requiring high coverage of colors and images
- Full height sleeves
- Glass bottles, plastic containers and the binding of several containers together into a single pack
- Transparent labeling that displays the contents
- Container labels that need to be water resistant
- Unusually shaped containers
- Special limited-period promotions where the shrink label can be applied to existing packs completely obscuring the normal label
