No rush to Russian label show.

With excitement mounting in the run-up to Labelexpo Americas, spare a thought for the Russian label show, last held in Moscow in the spring of 2006. From its beginnings in 1995, Etiketka-LabelShow grew rapidly, attracting over 100 exhibitors and tens of thousands of visitors in its heyday. After the rather limited success of the 2006 event the organizers announced that the show would henceforth be held in the spring of even-numbered years. Originally announced for March 2008, the show has now been rescheduled for October 7-10.

Visitors to the show's web site (www.labelshow.ru) will note that so far just 18 exhibitors are listed. Whatever the shortcomings of previous Moscow shows, it will be a pity if major Western equipment suppliers decide to boycott the Russian show this year. Russia's industrial production was up nearly 5 percent in 2007 (compared with 2.3 percent for the US economy and just 1.3 percent for the Euro zone). With crude oil topping the $100 a barrel mark and Russia's production now having risen to over nine million barrels a day, a lot of Russians are quite literally laughing all the way to the bank. Major Western brand owners continue to open new production plants in Russia (both Pepsico and Coca-Cola did so last year) and with massive investment continuing in supermarkets and other modern retail outlets, the demand for all kinds of labels remains strong.

So far only a handful of Western narrow web converters have set up business in Russia; their number was recently increased when Toronto-based CCL Label, one of the world's biggest converters, announced a 50/50 joint venture with Ilgar Mamedov, a well known entrepreneur in the Russian label business. The Russian partner's contribution will be in the form of two label converting plants, Kontur Plus in Moscow and Asterix in Saint Petersburg. The Asterix plant is equipped with three modern Gallus presses including a servo-driven TV410S; the two Russian companies, both of which specialize in PS label production, had total sales of $26 million in 2007.