Wrapping up bombs and meals: Specialty Bags Corp., Carollton, Texas, is supplying products for both the military and humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan. The company converts both foil/PE bags for packaging refugee meals, as well as Tyvek/foil/PE materials used in "smart" bombs pummeling Taliban installations. "We're helping the U.S. hurt the bad guys and help the good guys," says Specialty Bags president/CEO Steve Hanna.

Dri-Tec system heads to Colombia: Medillin-based Productos Autoadhesivos AR-clad® S.A. took acceptance Oct. 17 of a new reverse-roll coater/laminator system. It is the Milwaukee-based supplier's largest machine ever built and includes turret unwinds/rewinds, a flexo coater/ dryer and can be adapted for a slot-die coating unit in the future. ARclad is a major Latin American converter of p-s label constructions and siliconized materials. It expects to produce 430 million sq ft of substrates this year. The ARclad line, along with a new tandem-coating line with two vertical dryers destined for a customer in China, represents about $4 million of capital equipment under construction at Dri-Tec.

Multi-product converter Bemis Co. delays layoffs planned for last month at its Vancouver, B.C., Canada, bag plant. It now expects to let go 122 employees early next year. Bemis makes paper bags at Vancouver to hold rice, flour, pet food and other products. The company originally announced layoffs in August after it failed to reach agreement with workers on proposed cuts to wages and vacation time.

Mead, Westvaco merger moves ahead: The mega-union of the paper and paperboard converters announced last summer clears the Hart-Scott-Rodino reviews required for approval Oct. 16. The future $10 billion MeadWestvaco Corp. is expected to become reality by year's end.

Sliding right into a winning application: Lake Forest, Ill.-based bag converter Pactiv Corp. chooses Topas® cyclic olefin copolymer from Ticona, Summit, N.J., for its Hefty® Slide-Rite® resealable-closure system on flexible packaging. The resin is added to an LDPE blend in the Slide-Rite tracks for a stronger, straighter closure. Pactiv's first major application of the Slide-Rite is on Sargento® brand shredded-cheese pouches.

Partnering for prepress performance: Oshkosh, Wis.-based OEC Graphics purchases two ThermoFlex® 5280 flexographic platesetters from CreoScitex, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, and also agrees to beta-test the sleeve-imaging capability under development by CreoScitex for the Thermo-Flex system. The equipment won the FPPA Technological Innovator Award in 1999. It uses a multiple-beam, 830nm thermal laser to image plates.

Modified-atmosphere packaging, especially flex packs, will see dramatic growth in Western Europe over the next five years, says a new study by U.K. researcher Pira Intl.

Labels and flexible-packaging projects lead the list of high growth areas for packaging-design and production staff, says a new study by TrendWatch® Graphic Arts.

According to the market research arm of Cahners Business Information's Printing, Packaging & Converting Group, 21 percent of converters say these two end-use areas saw the highest growth over the past year. Among other categories, folding cartons (14 percent) and corrugated shippers (7 percent) were also seen by respondents as high-growth areas.

The first-of-its-kind report looks at issues involved in the creative and design-production workflow of the packaging business by focusing on the space from the graphic design of a package to the final platemaking and all the decisions in between. Marketing managers, designers, converters and end-user customers were surveyed.

More info: 866/873-6310, www.trendwatchgraphicarts.com