Packaging has been around for many hundreds of years in some shape or form. Right from the early days of people using wooden barrels to transport water right up to today’s rather sophisticated methods. For identification purposes packaging must be labelled in some way and the traditional methods for doing so would be to print and apply a label to the product.

The role of packaging in society is a vitally important one in not only in ensuring the safe delivery of products to the end-user but also in communicating the nature of the product and how it should best be utilised.

Packaging identifies the product and its function whilst transmitting brand values. It’s important that a brand owner chooses the correct packaging to suit the nature of the product and the purpose and desired functions of packaging a product in the first instance.Packaging must communicate a variety of information to ensure its safe usage and direction.

The global packaging industry is estimated to be around $500 billion US dollars. There are some key trends that indicate significant growth in demand for packaging in the coming years.

• An increase in population worldwide
• Longevity – people are living longer than ever before
• Smaller households – there are far more people living alone these days.
• Fast-pace society demands more convenience foods and single portion products and finally
• Due to the continuing strain the increasing population is having on our planet, we are all look at ways in which can reduce, re-use, recycle and most importantly seek out more sustainable methods of creating and disposing of our packaging

So consider the importance of the self-adhesive label within packaging furthermore within society and now consider the many challenges within the packaging industry. There is increasing legislative and consumer demands placed on the manufacturer to include far more product and user-information than ever before.

Just how can all this information be added into the space of one single label? Leaflet labels provide a solution to this challenge.

What is a leaflet label? A leaflet label combines an ordinary self-adhesive label with a folded leaflet or booklet. Leaflet labels are also commonly referred to as booklet labels, multi-page labels or expanded content labels. Occupying the space of a standard self-adhesive label they can provide anywhere from 2 to 36, 48 and sometimes even as many as 100 pages of additional information.

Leaflet labels appear on a whole host of different types of products and user-applications. Generally, they can be categorised into four main sectors:

1. Pharmaceutical

2. Agrochemical

3. Promotional &

4. Informational.

Fix-a-Form® leaflet labels can help to enhance your packaging and branding. Here are just some of the ways your brand can benefit:

• Automatic application
  Of common concern to manufacturers are the effects on production output rates and line speeds. Loss of manufacture means a loss of output and a loss of revenue.Leaflet labels are supplied in reel format and can therefore be applied using any standard label application equipment. As they can be thicker than a standard self-adhesive label, there would be fewer on a reel. Generally, manufacturers report little or no effect on their line speeds when applying leaflet labels directly onto a product even if they applied at high speeds.Incidentally, leaflet labels may also applied by hand depending for low volume and specialist production runs. This is quite common to the clinical trial and medical device industries where one-off and single dose units might be required.
• Packaging reduction:
  Leaflet labels provide almost unlimited additional space for the inclusion of a variety of product information. There is an increasing trend for manufacturers to simplify their inventory. The leaflet label can help to achieve this goal by offering additional space for the inclusion of multi-lingual product and user instruction. In some instances, they may replace a carton and a loose leaflet.Take an agrochemical product such as a pesticide. This product is most likely to be stored outside for a period of time until it is used and so the product information must remain protected until the time it needs to be referred to.
• Over-labelling for parallel imports:
  As legislation varies from one country to another, manufacturers are frequently faced with having to look at options for over-labelling of parallel imports. Leaflet labels can be produced to match exactly the space of an existing label and can be over-applied with great accuracy onto an existing product for this purpose.
• Anti-counterfeit features:
  No matter what part of the world you are in, be assured counterfeiting is an issue and will continue to be an issue for us all in future. It undermines public trust and costs the global economy billions of dollars each year. At worst it can cause sickness and fatalities to the unsuspecting public.Like standard self-adhesive labels, there are a number of options that can be included to verify the integrity of a product and help to combat counterfeiting. This can include overt as well as covert images and coding as well as simpler methods such as holograms.

Communication is Key whether you are conveying the contents or ingredients of a product, application rates of a pesticide or even instruction on how to take a course of drugs. If good user-instruction helps then it makes sense that a consumer or patient would be more inclined to have a positive experience with the product if it is used as prescribed. Most frequently, manufacturers find they receive less customer service enquiries when the product includes all of the necessary information.

Available in over 50 territories worldwide, follow the link to find your nearest leaflet label printing supplier www.fix-a-form.com