Last week, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed into law, HB-22-1355, which creates and EPR program for the state for packaging and printed paper. Colorado is now the third state in the country to formally approve packaging and paper-centered EPR legislation.

The legislation kicks off roughly four years of rulemaking and regulatory processes prior to taking effect. The core of the bill looks at a needs assessment for recycling collection and connected services across municipalities, which are funded through annual contributions by brands administered by a brand-centered Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO). The PRO will be overseen by the Colorado Dept. of Health.

Fees to brands will be largely determined by packaging attributes. Recyclable packaging, packaging with higher recycled content, deemed readily recyclable and less disruptive to recycling systems will generally pay lower fees. While labels, inks, adhesives and dyes are not specifically referenced in the legislation (and none are prohibited), the PRO will make determinations prior to fee schedules being issued regarding packaging elements that will draw higher fees in order to be sold in-state.

TLMI will follow the regulatory process once it begins and inform members of opportunities to provide input and developments as they occur.

Key Remaining & Eligible State Legislation

With most of the state legislatures adjourned for the year (only 9 remain in regular session) or until this fall, California advanced two measures out of their respective chambers, reported on in the prior RAC Newsletter, with changes directed at labeling and customer industries for specific packaging.

California Assembly Bill 2247, has passed the Assembly and was assigned to its initial Senate Committee on June 7th. It would establish a publicly accessible reporting platform to collect information about PFAS and products or product components containing regulated PFAS. The clearinghouse database was amended prior to Assembly passage and would now take effect in 2025, and PFAS determinations were also clarified, stating that they would need to be intentionally added in order for product lines to be covered.

Also advancing in the California legislature was Senate Bill 1097, which passed the full Senate and would require all cannabis products, other than those for topical use, to include a warning label that covers at least 1/3 of the front or principal face of the product, using the largest practical font type possible (in bright yellow), and include a pictorial or graphic element, along with an approved warning to the consumer. Please note – As a reminder, while the US Congress is currently considering legislation to change federal banking regulations to permit some cannabis and marijuana financial transactions, these laws remain in place for the time being.

Similar legislation outlining package warning requirements, alongside tamper-proof closures, California Assembly Bill 1894 also passed its chamber, and is now awaiting consideration in the Senate.

Legislation in New York that would have created an EPR program for the state, along with an EPR-connected packaging import fee in Hawaii both failed in their respective sessions. Bill sponsors are expected to reintroduce these measures in their next legislative sessions.

Tips for Submitting an Award-Winning Piece
By Keith Nagle, MPS North America

Each year the industry print associations hold their respective print awards program. This is an opportunity for converters to share their work and receive recognition amongst their peers. After the awards announcements are made each year, many converters find themselves asking what they could do to elevate their submission to an award. As a judge in both of our industry association’s print awards programs, I would like to offer the following tips.

Get an early start

Time is of the essence when submitting an award. Do not wait until the last minute to coordinate everything that is needed. In many cases, you will need to rely on others within your organization to support your efforts—samples, press set up information, components, and so on. Give yourself enough time to deliver what is necessary according to the submission guidelines. Don’t wait until you see TLMI’s social media reminder last call for submissions at the end of the open period. Some converters grab their submission samples throughout the year because they run complex or highly detailed jobs.

Double-check submission guidelines

Even the best submission can get disqualified if it does not adhere to the guidelines set by TLMI. If it lands on the judges’ table without necessary documents or falls short of the minimum requirements, they may not give it another glance. For all the time and effort, you will invest in a submission, it is vital to follow the rules and ensure you get equal consideration for your hard work. It may help to have a second set of eyes review your final submission. Do you have the job set up information? Did you provide details as to the difficulty of the job? Do you have the proper number of repeats or samples?

Pick the right category

Within each awards program you will find many distinct categories in which you can submit pieces for recognition. Often the judges find a piece that is placed into a category that takes away from the beauty and complexity of the label. For example, when you submit a piece in the category for screen printing it will judged on the screen work in the label. Everything from dot structure, cleanliness, how clean is the drop off, registration if process, etc. Understanding this, it would be a disservice to your submission to submit it in the screen category if only 10 percent of the label is screen printed. This would mean that 90 percent of the label is not being judged. All that beautiful line work, foiling, embossing, difficult registration, and time is not judged accordingly. Every year the judges look at the submissions and say, “that piece could win best of show if it was in the correct category.”

Also keep in mind that the judges may miss some of the intricacies of your piece if you do not submit any details on the work. It is considered favorable to provide a small write up on the job to be sure the judges understand what it took to deliver the end result.

Consider the judge’s point of view

Print award judges are industry professionals that come together to scrutinize the submissions. The judge’s role is not to be critical of the submitting companies, but to drill down to the absolute best printed piece in each category.They inspect these pieces under loupes and scopes looking for defects and deviations. Often these print deviations cannot be seen at arm’s length, but judges look much closer than that. It has happened that the final vote came down to which submission had the tightest registration. The last thing the judges want to do is award a piece that will be presented and displayed that’s out of register.

Why Participate?

Everyone has their reasons, but when I talk to my converter friends the reasons vary.Several industry leaders see this as a marketing initiative.Can you think of a better way to market your strong quality and capabilities to prospective customers than walking them into your facility and them seeing all of your prestigious recognition? Others have said it’s a way to help them get better at their craft.Submit what you believe is good award-winning print and have an industry panel grade them. Over time your internal quality control can become stale to the process and push work though and submitting these pieces allows us to grade our own process.We take the results and sit down afterwards to review and grow.

The judges enjoy this process each year as they meet, but it often brings heartache when they see pieces that can and should win an award not get the recognition it deserves. Many times, this can be avoided with a little more care during the submission process. Will you win every award you submit for? Unfortunately, no. Even the industry’s biggest names still must compete for a spot and, if their submission does not measure up, they must wait until the following year.

The 2022 Print Awards are now open. Click here for more information.

Click here to see past winners and to brush up on the guidelines and categories.

Have an idea for next month’s TechConnect or want to get involved in the Technical Committee? Email techconnect@tlmi.com!

TLMI announces that the Calvin Frost Sustainability Awards are now open for member submissions. In 2020, the Sustainability Leadership Awards Committee redesigned the submission process to acknowledge and recognize all levels of sustainability efforts, regardless of where companies are on their sustainability journeys. Each award level is open to any association supplier or converter member.
There are three different pathways to submitting an application for the Sustainability Awards: 

• The Trailhead Award: This award is earned by a member company that is early on in their sustainability journey. They may not have fully implemented their sustainability efforts, but they have distinctive goals and have begun formulating a strategy.

• The Journey Award: This award is earned by a member company that not only has publicly stated goals but has also begun implementing short-term actions aimed at long-term metrics to improve their business through sustainability efforts.

• The Elevation Award: This award is earned by a member company that is leading the industry with fully formed, publicly stated sustainability goals, strategies, and executions that are improving multiple aspects of sustainability. Award recipients will demonstrate significant, measurable, environmental benefits as a result of internal projects, products, or programs that go beyond regulatory requirements.  

The due date for submissions is August 29, 2022 and once announced, a formal press release will be issued featuring award winners to the association’s Media List. In addition, the company that submits what the judging panel considers to be the best-written proposal out of all the applications received will have the opportunity to create a professional on-site video with TLMI’s video engineers that will highlight the winning company’s sustainability efforts as highlighted in their submission.
 
TLMI VP of Sustainability, Rosalyn Bandy, comments, “Last year we had a record number of submissions for the Calvin Frost Sustainability Awards and we are gearing up for even more this year. Not only are winning companies featured in a formal press release sent to TLMI’s Media List; the best-written submission additionally gets TLMI’s professional team sent to their facility to film a feature video that they can use for their own marketing and communications purposes. Winning a Calvin Frost Sustainability Award is fantastic publicity for companies.”

For more information about the awards, please contact Aimee Peacock apeacock@flexcon.com or Rosalyn Bandy rosalyn.bandy@tlmi.com

TLMI announces that the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) Board of Directors approved the addition of a specialty grade to the guidelines for paper stock contained in the ISRI Scrap Specifications Circular at the Institute’s spring board meeting in March. ISRI’s Paper Division recommended to the Board of Directors that a specialty grade be added to the circular and referenced as ‘37-S Silicone Release Liner.’

The submission to add the grade to the ISRI circular initially came from TLMI and the industry’s CELAB (Circular Economy for Labels) Consortium. CELAB was founded by companies in the self-adhesive label industry to create greater circularity for its products by enhancing and promoting matrix and release liner recycling. TLMI and CELAB jointly requested the creation of a bale specification for silicone release liner at the end of 2021 and an ISRI working group reviewed and researched the request. The decision to create a specialty grade classification was passed by the Paper Division in early February.

CELAB Technical Workstream Co-chair and Sr. Technical Director at Avery Dennison, Chuck Williams, comments, “The ISRI specialty specification will help others understand that the liner can be recycled. The liners that the label industry uses are high quality papers and have high recycle value. We have proven that the release coating can be managed in recycling systems and hope this helps paper manufacturers in adopting a higher use rate of this quality feed stream.” Williams is also an active member of both TLMI’s Matrix and Liner Recycling Subcommittees.

CELAB Technical Workstream Co-chair and Technical Manager, Performance Materials – Paper Coatings at Wacker Chemie, Timothy Rummel, adds, “By having a grade code to support collection and recycling of used liner, we will be able to demonstrate the value of that used liner to the market. Liner can only be made with premium, highly refined fiber, and once the market realizes this, we believe end users will begin to seek it out.”

TLMI’s VP of Sustainability, Rosalyn Bandy, also a member of the CELAB Technical Workstream, comments, “I look forward to the day when recycling release liner will be a common occurrence and will contribute to a more circular economy.”

For more information, contact Rosalyn.Bandy@tlmi.com

TLMI announces that the association will hold its first southeastern regional event May 3, 2022 at the Bobst Competence Center in Alpharetta, GA. The day-long event is open to both TLMI members and non-members and will kick off the first in a series of regional events that the association plans to hold moving forward. Each regional event will focus on the most urgent issues suppliers and converters are facing in the current business landscape and how these forces influence each level of the supply chain. TLMI’s regional events are designed to be half-day forums for both association members and non-members that are within a day’s drive of where the events will take place.

TLMI’s Southeastern Sustainability Summit will focus on the basics of sustainability and the process of recyclability and ways that TLMI supplier members are contributing to circularity in the printed packaging industry. Event sponsors include Bobst, Henkel, Siegwerk, Sun Chemical and UPM Raflatac. Presentations will include an update on the APR (Association of Plastic Recyclers) Design for Recycling Protocols from TLMI’s VP of Sustainability, Rosalyn Bandy, and an overview of paper and liner recycling by Paul Pirkle, President of Mid America Paper Recycling. A brand representative will also be addressing attendees at the event.

TLMI President, Linnea Keen, comments, “We’re excited to be holding what will be the first in a series of regional meetings. Our members have been increasingly requesting that the association holds more regional meetings and these events will also give non-member companies an introduction to the association and to the resources and value we bring to membership. Label converting and circularity is a critical topic in today’s supply chain and I want to thank all of our sponsors for helping to make the event possible and to contributing their own unique expertise to the day’s offerings. Registration is now open, and since seating will be very limited, I urge members to sign up quickly.”

For more information about the event, please contact Rosalyn.Bandy@tlmi.com or Dale.Coates@tlmi.com.

The recently extended Finland-based strike at UPM mills compounds global supply chain challenges

The Tag & Label Manufacturers Institute (TLMI), on behalf of tag and label converters, their connected suppliers and end users, urge all parties to come to an immediate resolution of the ongoing strikes at numerous UPM paper mills in Finland. The strikes (now over 3 months long) have crippled a fragile global supply chain which supports the North American tag, label, supply chain and other material input companies in placing accurate information on a range of products in stores and commercial operations. Those mills are globally significant suppliers of label-making materials.

Labels are of vital commercial importance. Not only are labels informative from a consumer and business standpoint, they frequently provide critical safety information. Consumers across North America and the world depend on labels for buying decisions and for advice on medication use, food ingredients, allergy warnings, storage requirements and a host of other important on-package instructions.

The prolonged strike has impacted the availability of appropriate and required paper grades, the basis for many important labels and the information they carry to brands and consumers. Delays in production are worsening the supply chain problems related to COVID-connected port congestion, unloading of containers, and staffing challenges across railroad and trucking channels. The result is an unacceptable delay in ultimate product delivery, detrimental to the paper industry and businesses which rely on it.

TLMI member companies serve a range of important end markets, well beyond healthcare fields. The strike is now impacting the ability of the tag and label industry to secure sufficient paper and labels for those brands and their customers. It also threatens the stable employment, economic continuity and contributions that the industry provides to local economies across the country. As such, TLMI requests that regulatory authorities intervene so production at the impacted UPM locations may swiftly resume.

TLMI members take pride in the fact that our products are critical for the sale and use of almost every product sold in North America today – whether purchased from a store shelf, an e-commerce warehouse, a pharmacy/hospital dispensary or a car/machinery sales lot. The continued disruption of supply of papers used in labels has and will continue to contribute to outages for North American consumers until the strikes are resolved.

TLMI announces that the association has hired the Sustainable Packaging Coalition to teach an online course to association members on Thursday, May 12th from 1-2pm EDT. The course, titled The Essentials of Sourcing Fiber, will feature presenters Tom Pollock and Dr. Alyssa Harben, two of our industry’s most esteemed experts on the value of fiber certification and what it means to the printed packaging supply chain. The fee to sponsor the event is $500 and sponsor companies will receive recognition and acknowledgement on event materials. TLMI member sponsors to date include Appvion, Avery Dennison, Maxcess International and Wausau Coated Products.

The course will focus on fiber certification and standards, including the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), and will be open to all TLMI members as well as non-member companies. Over the past decade, SPC experts have taught The Essentials of Sourcing Fiber to hundreds of industry professionals around the globe.

Rosalyn Bandy, TLMI’s VP of Sustainability, comments, “I’m excited to have Tom Pollock and Dr. Alyssa Harben teaching this course to TLMI members and other industry contacts who want to participate. Tom leads SPC Forest Products, a coalition of companies across industry sectors that are working together to support thriving forests. Alyssa has a PhD in Packaging and during her time in graduate school developed a passion for consumer packaging and labeling research using applied psychology methods. These two professionals are truly some of the foremost experts in their respective fields and having them together teaching this course is an opportunity that every TLMI member should take advantage of.”

TLMI members will be receiving event registration information in the coming weeks and suppliers interested in sponsorships can reach out to rosalyn.bandy@tlmi.com.

At the association’s recent in-person Converter Meeting held in Santa Ana Pueblo, NM, TLMI announced the winners of this year’s Eugene Singer Award for Management Excellence. The award remains one of the industry’s most prestigious and coveted honors, recognizing excellence in business management measured and defined by an established set of growth and profitability ratios through participation in the TLMI Management Ratio Study.

To be considered for the Singer award, TLMI member converters submit a series of growth and profitability metrics to TLMI’s partner firm, Industry Insights. Greg Manns, Senior VP of Industry Insights, comments, “The 11 factors and metrics that determine the Singer award winners are a very well-rounded representation of a company’s overall financial health. The winning firms are most effective at growing their business while maintaining strong expense management.”

TLMI member converters throughout the United States and Canada participate in the Ratio Study, however only one company in each of the four size-range categories are awarded the Eugene Singer honor each year. This year, the awards were given to the following companies:

• Fountain Valley, CA-based Coast Label Co., won in the small company category for the sixth time.

• Portland, OR-based CleanMark Labels won for the mid-range company category. This is the company’s sixth time winning the Eugene Singer Award.

• Lakewood, NJ-based Luminer Converting Group won for the medium company category. This is Luminer’s second time winning the Eugene Singer Award.

• De Pere, WI based Belmark won for the large company category. This is Belmark’s twelfth time winning the Eugene Singer Award.

TLMI President, Linnea Keen, comments, “I would like to personally congratulate each and every one of this year’s Eugene Singer award winners. 2021 was a year of continued uncertainty and extreme supply chain and workforce challenges, and to be awarded this honor given the circumstances our industry, and our world, have weathered over the past year is truly an achievement worth recognizing and celebrating. The TLMI Ratio Study is the only industry initiative of its kind and remains one of the association’s greatest resources for our members.

Register here.

In today’s competitive business climate, automation of processes has become more important than ever for the flexo printer. What options do Tag & Label printers have for implementing automation within their prepress, platemaking and mounting departments and what does the future hold? What are the challenges faced by suppliers that will shape this future and challenges faced by printers can be most addressed by prepress automation?

Join us for a panel discussion with 3 industry experts in the fields of prepress software, flexo platemaking and plate mounting where answers to these questions and others will shed light on this hot topic.

Presenters:
-PJ Fronczkiewicz, NA Manager of Technical Marketing and Service, Dupont Cyrel Solutions
-Mike Agness, Executive VP of the Americas, HYBRID Software
-Bruce Hinkel, Technical Sales Manager, AV Flexologic Americas

Moderator:
-Keith Grimm, Vice President, Label Traxx

If this important topic might be of more direct benefit to one of your colleagues, please feel free to forward this invitation and link it to them.