SMART DESIGN

LABELS&LABELING |21
Sustainability and performance
from stretch sleeve labels
THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN STRETCH SLEEVE LABELS offer exciting new options to address
environment and sustainability issues, are highly efficient, and provide a rapid return on investment. Mike
Fairley reports on the new Triple S sleeves introduced by CCL Labels
Look at any of the recent market studies on the size and growth
of the label industry and it soon becomes clear that one of the
fastest growing label technologies over the past few years has
been sleeve labels. Latest estimates give sleeves around a 12
percent market share out of a total global label market of 76
billion US dollars.
Yet this figure is perhaps misleading. Sleeves are more than
just a label that competes with other types of labeling. They can
also compete with direct printing in some cases; they do offer
360 degree decoration, but so does wrap-around film or even
glue-applied labels; they can provide tamper-evidence and
security sealing, but then so does self-adhesives.
What sleeves do offer that is different to most other types of
labeling and decoration is a cost-effective method of decorating
highly complex shaped containers. They may also enable the
wall thickness of plastic containers to be reduced, eliminate
the need for colored containers, and provide new types of
promotional opportunities. Such benefits mean that sleeves have
often become a first choice for new product launches.
They are able to achieve these benefits through the sleeve
conforming tightly to the container shape. Traditionally this has
mainly been obtained by using a shrinkable film which has
been pre-printed on a gravure or flexo press. The web is then
formed into a tube, cut to size and placed over the container, and
then passed through a steam, hot air or infra-red shrink tunnel,
enabling the film to shrink to the container shape and provide a
high quality decorated bottle or container.
Historically dominated by PVC shrink films, which in many
markets have been increasingly faced with environmental
considerations, new types of non-PVC shrinkable films have
come into common use, including PET/PETg, PLA and OPS
– which, in turn, can provide a challenge when recycling PET
bottles.
Using the water separation technique which is commonly used
in Europe and the USA, the shrink sleeve material needs to have
FIGURE 2. CARBON FOOTPRINT OF A TRIPLE S STRETCH
SLEEVE COMPARED TO A CONVENTIONAL SHRINK SLEEVE
SHRINK
n PRODUCTION
n WASTE AND RECOVERY
n TOTAL CARBON FOOTPRINT
TRIPLE S SUPER STRETCH
FIGURE 1: EXAMPLE OF TRIPLE S STRETCH SLEEVE
PROVIDING LESS FILM WEIGHT PER SLEEVE WHEN
COMPARED TO A SHRINK SLEEVE
SHRINK SLEAVES
TRIPLE S
a specific gravity below one so that the material floats on
the water while the PET bottle flakes sink to the bottom of
the tank. The non-PVC materials mentioned above all have
specific gravities of about 1.25 to 1.4.
Such recycling challenges, particularly the need to
meet the latest European PET Bottle Platform Guidelines,
combined with other environmental pressures such as the
need to reduce film usage – both in volume and weight,
reduce the significant energy usage found in shrink tunnels
and eliminate glue usage, have led to a growing interest and
usage of alternative forms of sleeving, such as the Triple S
stretch sleeve label option introduced by CCL Label, Austria.
Instead of taking an oversize shrinkable PVC, PET, PLA
or OPS printed film tube and shrinking it to a tight fit using
a shrink tunnel, the Triple S sleeve technology takes an
LDPE printed film tube and stretches it over the bottle or
container. It then contracts to guarantee a tight fit without
any need for an energy-intensive shrink tunnel. It therefore
uses less film and requires no shrink
tunnel – potentially more than 50
percent like-for-like weight reduction
per sleeve label. This can be seen in
Figure 1.
Being a stretch film option, the film
is also able to expand or contract with
the bottle (an important requirement
for carbonated beverages), is ideal
for squeezable bottles, and always
fits tightly and perfectly flush. Not
being heat sensitive, the stretch
sleeving operation helps to stabilize
and counteract bottle distortion, or
‘belly-drop’ which is common with
hot-filled containers.
What’s more, the LDPE stretch
film used has a low density (0.91
gr/ccm) allowing easy and cleaner
JULY 2012 | L&L