AWA Alexander Watson Associates hosted its comprehensive Seminar Series on September 14-15, 2025. Co-located with Labelexpo Europe in Barcelona, Spain, the event offered three concurrent tracks: release liner, shrink sleeve, and smart labeling.

The 17th annual AWA Label Release Liner Seminar has historically represented a pivotal gathering for stakeholders across the pressure sensitive label and release liner sector. Meanwhile, the AWA Sleeve Label Seminar 2025 offers insights for suppliers, producers, converters, or end users. Finally, the AWA & AIPIA Smart Labeling Seminar 2025 tackled emerging technologies like RFID, NFC, and QR codes.

The AWA Seminar Series featured a wide range of sponsors, including Avery Dennison, Dow, Elkem, ETI Converting, Flint Group, Maxcess and more.

Industry overview

Corey Reardon, president and CEO, AWA, welcomed attendees to Barcelona on the morning of September 15^th. There, he delivered a data-driven session illustrating the state of the label and package printing industry – specifically as it relates to labelstock and release liners.

“Labeling represents almost 50% of almost all release liner produced worldwide for papers and films – siliconized substrates,” said Reardon. “It drives a lot of innovation and change for the industry because it’s such a dominant application area.”

According to AWA, the global release liner market represents about 60.9 billion square meters of release liner material, which includes silicone coated papers and films. This factors in both pressure sensitive (PS) and non-PS applications. Of this overall figure, about 47% is contributing to label applications, which is by far the largest application for release liner. Other segments include tapes and hygiene, but they are still quite a bit smaller than labels.

Asia-Pacific leads the global release liner market, as the region produces 43% of the material. This region can be segmented into five subcategories, as well. Meanwhile, North America and Europe account for 26% and 25% of the release liner produced in the global market, respectively.

Liner differences

With nearly 50% of the global release liner market, 28.8 billion square meters, factoring into labels, 56% are categorized as glassine/SCK Paper. Of that 56%, North America is primarily utilizing SCK while the rest of the world uses glassine.

“Polyester liner continues to grow at faster rates, but a lot of segments of the label market are not adaptable from paper,” notes Reardon. “Logistics, warehousing, and weigh scale are not applicable for a polyester liner. That segment of the market is pretty steady on a paper liner, while 50% of the rest of the market – prime labels – you see growth in polyester.

“Over the last 5-7 years, disruptions have caused polyester to gain some share as a replacement for paper,” adds Reardon. “There are a lot of dynamics happening, and in the end, polyester grows at a faster rate than paper but not at a rate that’s moving the needle very much over short-to-medium term.”

Reardon anticipates a stable label market moving forward. While volatility has been characteristic of the last few years, the next five years should offer predictability and stabilization.

“We understand the release liner market for labels, but there are a whole series of market dynamics that affect the growth prospects of release liners going into labeling,” remarks Reardon. “One is labeling is much broader than PS, as well as different packaging formats like a rigid container that used to have a PS label on it. These other markets are growing, in terms of substitution from a packaging standpoint.”

The global label market

When AWA analyzes the global label market, 43% of the global label material produced is PS. Meanwhile, glue-applied accounts for 36%. There is also a growing percentage in shrink sleeve labeling, too, which represents 19% of the label technology volume produced worldwide. The Global PS label market measures at roughly 48% for VIP labeling and 43% for prime label. “If you take out VIP labeling and just look at prime labels – PS is 23%, with 44% glue applied (or cut and stack) and 25% sleeve.”

As Reardon noted, shrink sleeve cover 100% of the bottle, whereas PS and glue-applied amount to patch technology that only covers 30-40% of the bottle on average. This data is not units labeled.

Plus, the global label market by end use for all labeling formats includes: 43% Beverage;  22% Food; 7% Transport & Logistics; and 5% Health & Personal Care.

Looking into the future, Reardon stated, “We expect the next few quarters will be flat for most materials going into the market. There are shifts being driven by tariffs, but there were shifts even prior to tariffs such as global sourcing from suppliers. The global supply base with local production is designed to prevent disruptions of supply from a company that is thousands of miles away. Procurement has become a key strategic imperative for companies, as it could represent 50-80% of costs for many companies.”