Shrink Sleeve Labels

Over the past couple of years, the shrink sleeve label business has accelerated the development of environmentally friendly products, and efforts to utilize used labels as valuable resources rather than treating them as disposable waste have been taking shape. One of these initiatives is RecShrink^TM labels, the label-to-bottle project in which labels and PET bottles are recovered together to be recycled into PET bottles. This recycling method does not require consumers to remove the labels when disposing of PET bottles and enables our customers to continue using the existing manufacturing machinery. In the Americas, an increasing number of manufacturers are already beginning to use RecShrink^TM labels. In the future, we plan to expand its introduction to European and ASEAN markets.

On the other hand, in Japan, where unique regulations on recycling are enforced, it is necessary to remove labels from PET bottles before disposal, we have launched the "label to label" project with the collaboration of our business partners to recycle used labels into new ones, which a number of manufacturers have started implementing. We feel there are encouraging signs of the potential of the shrink sleeve labels business.

In the new factory in North Carolina, which is scheduled to be completed in December 2022, we aim to create an environment that will be friendly not only to the environment but also to employees by reducing the use of solvents and automating transportation within the factory. We believe this factory will serve as a standard model for future reconstruction or expansions of other factories in other regions.