10 December 2014

Kuresa sees changing landscape in Peru

Few label markets can have developed as rapidly in recent years as Peru. Historically dominated by offset printing and a big importer of labels, the Peruvian industry has seen an explosion of new self-adhesive label converters taking advantage of strong growth in the local market. This has been stimulated by one of Latin America’s highest GDP growth rates over the last five years, as well as membership of the Pacific Alliance, a free trade agreement with Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

Lima-based Kuresa, also the country’s leading producer of adhesive tapes, moved into label printing in the late 1990s, when the local industry was still in its infancy. Printing high quality prime labels on Ilma letterpress machines – and winning numerous FINAT awards en route – the company quickly built a dominant position in the local industry.

In recent years, there has been a surge in the number of local competitors – managing director Jaime Yoshiyama estimates there to be now around 12 important self-adhesive label converters installing advanced technology in Peru; a few years ago there were less than a handful.

Both start-ups and companies entering label production from different sectors are jostling for spoils. Among the former is Primitiva Label (see L&L4 2010), founded by Chilean label empresario Fernando Aravena in a joint venture with flexible packaging converter Union Plast. Also covered in L&L, examples of the latter include Grupo Fibrafil ( L&L2 2012, and see pages 68-71 in current issue); pre-press house Zetta (see next issue of L&L) and Cimagraf (L&L2 2014), whose historical expertise in editorial, carton and sheetfed label printing has now been complemented by self-adhesive label production on presses from Nilpeter and HP Indigo.

‘The landscape of the Peruvian label market has changed considerably over the past five years,’ says Jaime Yoshiyama. ‘There is a lot of new competition: companies entering the market from scratch or from other sectors such as wide web and forms printing.’