Kumar Labels celebrates 10th anniversary

Innovative SRTF labelstock can reduce liner use

December 29, 2017

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Kumar Labels recently celebrated its 10th anniversary with a technology sharing event NAVONMESH 2007-17 (Innovations 2007-17) at the Le Meridien hotel New Delhi. Brand owners and label industry leaders took part and shared recent innovations through presentations in a three part program. Recent innovations offered by several print suppliers were explained by speakers from Gallus, Kurz, Toyo-Arets and Arconvert who also showed their product samples.

Kumar Labels’ own patented Single Release with Two Facestocks technology (SRTF) was formally launched by a team from Beam Suntory India, the makers of Teacher’s Whisky and Jim Beam, in the next part of the program. Traditionally, a pressure sensitive self-adhesive labelstock is manufactured by gumming paper or film facestock with an adhesive to a liner. A silicon coating layer is applied to the liner which enables the face stock to be separated for application on its intended product. When the printed face stock is pasted or applied on products or containers the release liner becomes useless and since it has a silicone layer it is very difficult to pulp and recycle with other like materials. Since the silicon coated release liners are not recyclable due to the presence of silicone coating, various attempts have been made in the past to use them as fuel briquettes and thermal insulators. Separating silicone from papers is a very costly and hence all the used liners are incinerated into fumes or dumped into landfills which is a huge environmental concern to the label industry. In fact the key to dealing with solid waste in India is to separate at source rather than turning waste into energy or putting it into landfills which is now becoming impossible since there is no land for this purpose.

SRTF is Kumar Labels contribution to the solution to this industrial solid waste problem. The SRTF innovation uses a single release liner which carries printed face stock on both sides of the release liner to reduce liner waste by 50%. Labelstock cost is reduced by 20% and there is a 50% reduction in usage of resources to make the release paper and a similar reduction of solid wasted to be disposed. At the event, a SRTF label was symbolically stuck on a green color planter to mark its launch.

In the third and final part of the event, Anuj Bhargava, founder of Kumar Labels, took everyone through the 10 year journey. Mentioning that ‘Navonmesh’ has been the spirit of Kumar Labels, he named and thanked many who have contributed to the success of Kumar

Kumar Labels 0520 — Samir Patkar, managing director of
Gallus India delivering a presentation
at Navonmesh 2007-17.
Photo Kumar Labels

Labels in the past decade. To keep the spirit of innovation going, Kumar Labels gave away planters mounted with NFC enabled smart labels which guests could scan and view pictures of the event in subsequent days. All in all, Navonmesh was a well planned and vibrant evening – a mixture of technology and innovation. A positive networking of the label industry in North India conveying both environmental concern and gratitude.

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