A good business to be in: the in-mold label growth rate has averaged 8 to 10 percent annually, says Ronald Schultz, president of RBS Technologies, Inc., Scottsdale, Ariz. Schultz presented market facts during his recent course, "The ABCs of IML."

The total market value of film and paper IML is $130 million. Interestingly, the label substrate represents about 40 percent of the price of the finished IML label. Integrated converters produce 50 percent of U.S. in-mold labels. Printers using narrow-web and sheet-fed presses convert 50 percent of IML.

According to Schultz, the top IML users are makers of household-chemical and laundry products. The U.S. represents 51 percent of the $255 million global-IML market. "But these numbers may be conservative," Schultz adds.