• Half a century of flex-pack converting: Green Bay, WI-based converter Valley Packaging Supply, Inc., celebrates 50 years of serving the packaging industry in 2004 and recently completed a 35,000-sq-ft addition to its plant. Founded in 1953 in the DePere, WI, home of Cornelius Vogel, VPS has had four additions to its original plant before moving to its current, just-expanded location. The company converts standup-zippered pouches, coffee bags with one-way valves, Inno-Lok® pre-zippered film, and other flex packs for a variety of industries and businesses.
• Three decades of service: Converter Accessory Corp., Wind Gap, PA, celebrates 30 years of serving the web-processing industry in 2004. Founded in 1974 by Larry Damour and now in its second generation of Damour family leadership, CAC provides a wide variety of web-handling technology and consultation.
• Digital-printer maker changes hands: Belgium-based Agfa-Gevaert agrees Jan. 5 to acquire dotrix NV, maker of "the.factory" digital color-printing system. Price of the transaction is about $7.5 million. Says Albert Follens, a member of Agfa's Board of Management and gm of Graphic Systems, "dotrix will allow us to gain larger access to industrial-printing niches such as decoration, packaging and security printing." dotrix's 2003 revenues were estimated at close to $6.3 million.
• Beverage demand to up label demand: Use of plastic and glass beverage containers will top more than 97 billion units in 2007, says a new study by The Freedonia Group, Cleveland, and the vast majority of those containers will need printed labels. De-mand will rise from 81 billion sold in 2002—up about 3 percent a year over the next four years. Beverage-consumption growth, and consequently related container sales, will be driven by healthy levels of consumer spending, tap-water safety concerns, and high levels of new product introductions, the report says.
• Up to 70 sq ft of digital print in one shot: Phoenix-based Sierra Screenprinting will take delivery of a NUR Tempo large-format, flatbed digital printer late this month. Capable of digitally printing full-color images via UV inks onto substrates up to 2 in. thick, the system offers production speeds to 883 sq ft per hr. The printer handles substrates such as Foamcore®, corrugated plastic, banner vinyl, acrylic, PVC and paper, in sizes up to 6-1/2 ft by 10-1/2 ft, without laminating.

The primary job of a labelmaker is to print labels, not necessarily read them. But the results of the 7th Annual Wacky Warning Label Contest might give converters a reason to start proofreading more closely.

Conducted by the Novi, MI-based Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch (M-LAW), the competition shows how the fear of lawsuits has prompted manufacturers to issue warnings against even obvious misuses of consumer products. Apparently, all common sense has also gone out the window.

This year's Grand Prize went to a warning found on a bottle of drain cleaner, which reads: "If you do not understand, or cannot read, all directions, cautions and warnings, do not use this product."

The second-place award went to a label on a snow sled, which says: "Beware: sled may develop high speed under certain snow conditions." The label on a 12-in.-high CD storage rack, which warns: "Do not use as a ladder," took third place. "Harmful if swallowed" on a fishing lure won fourth place; and fifth place went to a smoke detector which warns: "Do not use the Silence Feature in emergency situations. It will not extinguish a fire."

"Wacky warning labels are a sign of our lawsuit-plagued times," says Robert B. Dorigo Jones, M-LAW president. "It used to be that if someone spilled coffee in their lap, they simply called themselves clumsy. Today, too many people are calling an attorney."