How Trendline works

Trendline starts with converters themselves. Rather than repackaging high-level forecasts, it asks the people who run converting businesses how they are thinking about capital, labor, customers, suppliers, and technology, and why.

Two methods work together. A detailed survey captures how converters rank their priorities, challenges, and plans. Interviews and discussions with converters add the reasoning behind those choices. LPC then interprets the results in the context of decades of work alongside converters and the suppliers who serve them.

Trendline 2026 gathered input from more than 70 converters across the United States and Canada over eight weeks. Participants print labels, flexible packaging on narrow and mid-web presses, shrink sleeves, in-mold labels, and security applications.

The participant mix includes a broad cross-section of converter sizes and ownership structures. The report examines how priorities and pressures differ between small to mid-sized and large converters.