The Australian Institute of Packaging (AIP) is extremely proud to advise that one of its members Graeme Lang MAIP has been recognised for his 40 years’ experience as a material scientist with a World Packaging Organisation (WPO) Lifetime Achievement in Packaging Award. Graeme was one of two recipients for the latest round of the awards program.
According to Prof. Pierre Pienaar FAIP, CPP, President, World Packaging Organisation (WPO), “The WPO ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’, in the field of packaging, was established with the aim of recognising practitioners, from all packaging disciplines, who have made a significant national or international contribution in packaging over a prolonged and sustained period”, says Pierre Pienaar, WPO President. In so doing, the WPO acknowledges and rewards excellence in all aspects of packaging science, technology, design and application across the globe.
“It is these people who have consistently pushed the boundaries in advancing packaging to serve the needs of an ever more demanding consumer base. These prestigious awards will celebrate and preserve, in perpetuity, the collective achievements of these innovators.” Prof Pienaar said.
Still wondering how this recognition is even possible for a material scientist Graeme Lang MAIP wanted to share what winning the WPO Lifetime Achievement Award means to him.
“First and foremost, I think it is just the greatest honour that somebody in my field of activity could hope to receive… to even be considered alongside the doyens of the packaging industry who have received this award in the past is a huge, huge personal thrill. It still feels like we are talking about someone else,”
“I think the most important element in any job, or any career, is to have the sense that what you do makes a difference. In a big way receiving the WPO Lifetime Achievement Award gives validation to the effort that I have put in over the last 40+ years.”
For the last thirty years Graeme has held the position of Group Technical Manager with Labelmakers Group and has been a significant contributor to the technical side of the labelling industry for four decades in the Australasian region.
Holding Patents for the formation of a 3D label from a flat web and a second patent for a removable label for returnable plastic crates used in the logistics industry (Crate Wash-Off Label), Graeme has certainly left his mark on the industry.
Over two decades ago Graeme established the pressure-sensitive label (PSL) coatings division for Labelmakers, creating one of the first vertically integrated printing companies in the world. Achieving backward integration into materials coating meant that Labelmakers could develop adhesive technology specifically for Australia’s application requirements, and delivered a competitive advantage in terms of cost, speed-to-market, end-to-end traceability of materials and local new product development capability. Labelmakers has since grown to become the largest label printer in Australasia utilising its own adhesive technology to support a range of market categories. Labelmakers is the only company in Australasia to be locally manufacturing pressure-sensitive materials.
Graeme is also busy commercialising a range of sustainable label solutions that have been informed by Australia’s recycling pathway. This range will include recycled and recyclable facestocks, de-bondable adhesive systems and dispersible ink systems – that are adapted to specific primary container types and local recycling infrastructure.
For the last two decades, Graeme has advocated for sustainability to be incorporated as an aspect of new product design. He has fostered co-operation between stakeholders – raw material suppliers, brand owners and recyclers – to understand, educate and address the important role labels play in maximising the recovery of the primary containers to which they are attached.
The AIP invited Graeme to share what are the standout innovations and technologies that he has seen in the labelling industry over the last 40 years?
“Perhaps some of the most impactful innovations have been the more arcane developments in the chemistries of the liquid components that make up labels – adhesives, release coatings and inks – but some of the most significant outcomes from these innovations would be:
1) The wholesale conversion of wine and beer bottling from glue-applied (or wet glue) labels to pressure sensitive labels.
“In the case of wine, narrow web PS printing and converting processes facilitated much greater opportunity for embellishment and scope for design. They offer a vastly wider range of materials, scope for different label shapes, profiled surfaces through embossing, screen printing and high build UV ink layers, UV patterned matt and high gloss spot varnishes. From the bottling hall’s perspective PSL virtually eliminated down time due to changeovers from one label size to another – no need to change dozens of individual glue pallets as you do with glue applied labels – simply splice in the new roll of PS labels with the push of a button. No messy glue wash ups required and the very considerable and often overlooked cost of maintaining and replacing glue pallets was avoided.
Of course, the development of specific PS adhesives was required to accommodate the sometimes-challenging label application conditions – cold, condensated glass surfaces, and of course the machinery applicators needed to develop application equipment that allowed the label to be applied at the same speeds as wet glue labellers.
In under 10 years we saw the almost wholesale transition from wet glue labelling to PSL. Australia was probably the first place in world where this took place so comprehensively, but the rest of the wine world has since followed. It’s hard to find a wet glue wine label anywhere in the world these days.
It probably took place 10 years after wine in Australia, but high-volume beer saw a similar transition from wet glue to PS. Again, PS afforded the embellishment and design scope that weren’t economically possible with wet glue printing processes as well as having all the same label application benefits however in this case it has been with entirely different materials. The advent of ‘no-look’ label – printing direct or reverse on very thin gauge crystal clear polymer films (compared to thick paper print carriers). Developing adhesives and coating methods that applied half the standard thicknesses whilst resisting pasteurising conditions as well as water whitening/re-emulsification in an ice bucket. The other development that the success of PS beer labels relied heavily upon was the need for a release liner that could withstand the high stresses placed upon the web in order to achieve label application speeds comparable to wet glue – upwards of 70,000bph.
2) Shrink Sleeves.
“Percentage wise shrink sleeves have become the fastest growing segment in the label market due to a number of factors:
- At the top of that list is branding – the opportunity it gives brand owners for 360⁰ full height decoration of complex shaped primary containers.
- Exploiting the complete coverage of the container to build in additional functionality such as insulation, UV and visible light barriers to protect sensitive products against degradation due to light strike.
- Ability to build tamper evidence into the pack with tamper seals.
- Label/pack integrity. Images printed on shrink sleeves can resist abrasion and the shrink sleeves themselves remain perfectly in place in situations where adhesives in PSL or glue applied labels fail.
- 100% material utilisation/Zero waste at application (no spent release liner for the bottler/packager to dispose of as is the case with PSL).
Innovation here has been necessary for just about every aspect in getting the printed sleeve onto the bottle from the shrink materials to the design of the inks to maintain their integrity when they have contracted by over 50%, to the application equipment even in the origination stage where pre-press files must be adapted to accommodate the distortion of the image that takes place after the sleeve is applied and shrunk. Of course, being a relatively new form of decoration, which means there is still a great deal of innovation taking place.
3) Sustainability
“This probably segues into the supplementary part of the question – What’s next. I have had trouble thinking of any Innovation/NPD session that I have participated in with a major brand owner in the last 3 years where the primary focus wasn’t sustainability… and rightly this is an absolute imperative,”
“I sometimes start these sessions with the factoid that the label typically makes up less than 1% of the total pack by weight but where no consideration is given to the primary pack or the endemic recycling processes, that 1% typically lessens or in many cases prevents the recovery of the 99% that is the primary container it is attached to. After all the label typically is the outermost layer and the first material seen by the sorting technology,”
“I am happy to say the innovations here are happening at a meteoric rate. There is so many innovations being rolled out as we speak. To name a few:
- Print carriers comprising mechanically and chemically recycled content.
- Plastics made from renewable bio sourced materials.
- Print carriers made of the same material as the primary container so they can be recovered with the primary container obviating the creation of a secondary waste stream and face stocks made of quite disparate materials to the primary container so they are easily separable from the primary container.
- PSA’s tailored to debond in specific conditions for particular recycling environments
This also includes Digital watermarks that identify the origins and composition of the separation of the packaging in co-mingled waste streams by material type and by food grade status – systems such as the Holy Grail 2.0,”
“I believe that the rapid progress that has been made recently in sustainable innovations is due to co-operation around the entire circumference of the supply cycle – raw material manufacturers to substrate producers to converters to brand owners to end users to waste collection/ spent materials recovery to recyclers; then in a perfect world feeding back into raw material manufacturers. For these innovations to continue at the speed we need we have to maintain this collaborative approach.”
Graeme also highlighted the top three achievements in his forty-year career that he is most proud of and why…
1) The Development water based acrylic PSA’s for the PSL wine market.
“In the mid to late 80’s at Jac paper we were somewhat hamstrung by only having water based acrylic adhesive technology at our disposal. With the rapidly emerging PSL wine label market there was a gap in the PSA technology where labels were required to be applied to cold condensation covered bottles – particularly with sparkling wine. Using a technique from another non pressure sensitive adhesive process for combining aqueous dispersions with solid resins we were able to create an adhesive that repelled the condensation on the bottling line and resisted re-emulsification in the ice bucket – the adhesive created was WLK 202. In solving the challenge of labelling cold wet bottles it helped secure much of the emerging PSL wine label stock business for Jac,”
“Why did this make my top three achievements? Because it sanctioned visiting wineries for work,”
2) The Development of the self-adhesive postage-stamp label material for Australia Post.
“In 1990 this was really the first full featured postage stamp mass produced for general issue in the world and quickly displaced the lick and stick stamp. The development incorporated different functionalities within the adhesive through multi layers. This created a destructive bond attachment to satisfy the service conditions but, driven by the philatelic community, also allowed the clean removal of the stamp using the same methods as were used for lick and stick stamps. It also involved the development of the security/detection coating as the print surface that was adapted on the fly for the post offices cancellation inks.’”
“Why was this so satisfying? Because it utilised technologies that had not really been deployed by the PSL industry previously to provide a solution that hadn’t been previously sought. It involved three different coating techniques, using three distinct pieces of plant, a refurbished 90-year-old offline super calendar. There was just this desperate drive amongst our group to deliver the solution. I do consider myself extremely fortunate to have been working for a company, and particularly having a boss at that time, who was so helpful and supportive of this development. They say you stand on the shoulders of giants – he’s not very tall but he was, and still is, a giant. I won’t mention his name – that’s just not him. Above all it was the feeling I got from the combined efforts of a team that brought about the success – and for me that feeling of a shared success far exceeds that from an individual effort,”
“Of course, there was the thrill too of being involved in an innovation which was very much in the view of, and noticed by, the general public.”
3) Establishing Labelmakers Pressure Sensitive Material Division
“I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been involved in establishing a pressure sensitive manufacturing operation from scratch. This required conceiving and designing the product range (albeit that it was only 3 products initially), finding and sourcing the raw materials (before the Internet), designing and commissioning the adhesive coating line (the budget wasn’t sufficient at the time to buy an off the shelf coating line from a known manufacturer). We bought the various components of the coating line separately and searched the world for someone who would attempt cobbling them together,”
“Since those early days the division has expanded some 90-fold to produce a third of the pressure sensitive label stock converted in this country, comprising a multitude of combinations of different face materials, adhesives and release liners on state-of-the-art coating lines. I am particularly proud of the products that have been conceived and created by this division – products that account for the uptake and success of pressure sensitive labels as the primary means of decorating beer and dairy in Australia. Beer labels and milk labels are the way they are as a result of Labelmakers innovation,”
“The Labelmakers coating division is the last remaining wide web commercial scale producer of pressure sensitive label stock in Australia. It has provided direct employment and careers for well over 100 people over the last 30 years and a huge vote of thanks must go the owner of Labelmakers – Kevin Bamford who 30 years ago had the vision and the big business thinking to vertically integrate materials manufacture into label production. Again, for someone from the lab bench to get this sort of opportunity I consider myself extremely fortunate. “
After forty years in the industry Graeme has some advice for the next generation of labelling professionals…
“I guess I see things with the slant of a technologist, but I think what I am about to say can apply to other functions equally. The first and easiest advice I would give is – be curious. To borrow from the Kaizen philosophy, ask the 5 why’s in any new pursuit, problem solving or product development opportunity,”
“Don’t limit focus to just what you need to know to complete your immediate task. Try to build a knowledge and an understanding of your supplier’s technology and your supplier’s suppliers technology for that matter. Do the same with customer and the end user,”
“I would say look outside your direct industry for new solutions and new innovations. We are in quite a mature industry today – the probability is that if there was solution it would already have been created or implemented. For me the most significant product developments I have been associated with involved drawing from allied industries or other branches of the packaging industry I had been exposed to.”