By Dale Coates, CEO of TLMI
Founded over 90 years ago, TLMI (The Tag and Label Manufacturers Institute) is the premier association representing the label and packaging industry in the North America region. As a notforprofit with a commitment to leadership, collaboration, and sustainability, TLMI serves as a guiding voice for its members fostering connection, promoting best practices, and driving continuous advancement across the industry.
In this article, Dale Coates, TLMI, CEO & President, discusses industry trends and how the organization sees the role and scope of LOUPE, formerly Labelexpo.
Overview
The label and packaging industry is entering a period of meaningful transformation. What once revolved around a single product category, labels, now encompasses a broader range of packaging formats shaped by shifting consumer expectations, sustainability pressures, and rapid changes in brand behavior. As they have been for decades, TLMI and LOUPE are aligned in recognizing and amplifying this expanded landscape.
A Legacy of Adaptation
TLMI’s history reflects an industry that has consistently expanded its capabilities. What began as a community rooted in tag production grew into an organization serving label manufacturers, and today it supports a marketplace that stretches well beyond traditional pressure sensitive constructions.
That same spirit of evolution defines the current moment. Converters are applying the craftsmanship and technical rigor of label production to adjacent formats such as flexible packaging and folding cartons. These shifts are not driven by technology alone; they stem from the changing needs of brands seeking partners who can offer speed, creativity, and a broader range of packaging solutions under one roof.
Industry Landscape: Expanding Value Through Capability
While labels remain the backbone of narrow web operations, the industry’s value proposition is expanding as is the width considered narrow and the technologies used. Today’s converters serve brands that navigate SKU complexity, redesign cycles, sustainability commitments, and growing expectations for supply chain agility. These pressures reward partners who can respond quickly and deliver consistent quality across multiple packaging types.
The capabilities that have long defined the label community – attention to detail, responsiveness, and operational discipline – are increasingly being applied across a wider packaging spectrum. As a result, many converters are repositioning themselves not simply as label producers, but as packaging partners with broader reach and deeper strategic relevance.
Key Forces Shaping the Next Decade
- Convergence Across Packaging Formats
The boundaries between labels, sleeves, flexible packaging, and cartons are becoming more fluid. Converters are reshaping their businesses to reflect the way brands now buy packaging. This convergence is transforming workflows, customer relationships, and long-term business strategies. Narrow web operations are becoming multiformat production environments supported by complementary print and finishing technologies. - Sustainability as a Central Driver
Driven by regulation and consumer demand, sustainability is no longer an optional initiative. It is rapidly becoming an essential component of how converters operate and how brands evaluate partners. The move toward recyclable substrates, reduced waste, and lower impact materials continues to accelerate.This shift is expanding opportunities for converters that embrace data-driven sustainability programs and invest in environmentally aligned equipment and processes. As regulatory frameworks tighten, these capabilities are increasingly tied to competitive advantage. - Customer Expectations for Agility and Insight
Brands want more than production. They want guidance. The converters gaining momentum are those that can support rapid change, offer packaging solutions across formats, and bring data, insight, and problem solving into the relationship. This shift elevates the role of the converter from supplier to strategic collaborator.
LOUPE: A Platform Aligned with Industry Direction
The transition from Labelexpo to LOUPE reflects the broader evolution unfolding within the industry. The rebrand signals a recognition that the market now spans multiple packaging formats and requires a wider lens.
LOUPE brings three strategic advantages to the industry:
- A Broader View of Packaging Possibilities
LOUPE unifies label, flexible packaging, and carton technologies in one environment, mirroring the converged capabilities developing on converter floors. - A Community Designed for Cross Format Collaboration
LOUPE’s exhibitor and attendee base reflects a more integrated packaging ecosystem – one where materials, automation, workflow systems, and finishing solutions interact across multiple formats. - A Global Stage That Mirrors Industry Reality
By broadening its scope, LOUPE reflects the true scale of the modern narrow web sector and reinforces the message that label converters are increasingly packaging partners capable of serving diverse brand needs.
TLMI’s Role in Guiding the Industry Forward
As capabilities within member companies continue to widen, TLMI’s role becomes even more central. The association remains focused on values that directly support member success:
Community
Providing spaces that enable knowledge sharing, peer-to-peer learning, and collaboration across a wider set of packaging interests and challenges.
Insight
Delivering research, benchmarking, and market intelligence that help members navigate shifting demand, changing materials landscapes, and evolving customer needs.
Advocacy & Sustainability Leadership
Offering tools, frameworks, and representation that help members address regulatory expectations, achieve sustainability goals, and communicate their progress credibly and effectively.
Redefining What It Means to “Label”
The meaning of “label” has expanded. It no longer describes a single product. It describes capability. Label converters today serve as creators of pressure sensitive constructions, flexible packaging, folding cartons, and a growing range of packaging solutions including all forms of tags & labels.
This broader definition reflects the reality of modern narrow web production: the ability to label is the ability to decorate, protect, inform, and differentiate packaging across multiple formats.
Together, TLMI and LOUPE are poised to elevate this expanded definition on a global stage, showcasing the creativity, innovation, and forward momentum that continue to define this industry.