US-based materials science and manufacturing company, Avery Dennison Corporation has launched AD Stretch to collaborate with start-up companies and promote disruption and evolution in labeling and packaging.

According to Avery Dennison Corporation, AD Stretch is a first-in-the-labels-industry program focused on collaborating with start-up entrepreneurs to tackle major challenges and generate new opportunities in sustainability, consumer experience, and value chains.

The company seeks to collaborate with startups to further enable disruption and evolution in labeling and packaging while strengthening industry innovation skills. The goal is to address some of the industry's most pressing business concerns by bringing together Avery Dennison's experience and scale with talented entrepreneurs and inventors to collaborate and flourish.

Pascale Wautelet, global vice president, research and development, label and graphic materials, Avery Dennison, said that AD Stretch will play a critical role in their overall innovation approach and extend their circle of innovators, complementing their industry-leading internal capabilities and their corporate venture program. They're going beyond borders and boundaries, and expanding the pool of industry talent with which they collaborate, to create a collective global problem-solving culture that inspires everyone it touches and delivers real value for their stakeholders and society.

The program will begin with regional cohorts in the Asia Pacific and Latin America before expanding to Europe and the United States later this year. Each cohort will have a region-specific brief that draws on particular difficulties, with the end goal of fixing a specific problem.

The primary themes will be connecting customers to businesses through new experiences, developing sustainable, responsible, and efficient value chains (SRE), and developing materials and packaging 2.0.

Shruti George, senior director, Strategic Innovation Platforms at Avery Dennison, said that there are problems and opportunities in equal proportion when dealing with a complex ecosystem. In some circumstances, the solutions are found in scale and existing infrastructure; in others, they are found in agility and a blank page. They're supercharging their efforts to boost supply chain efficiency, build the next generation of packaging, and solve environmental concerns by combining their financial might with the agility of start-up inventors.

In collaboration with venture studio Highline Beta, the program aims to recruit the best and brightest businesses and innovators. Following a review and consultation phase, the applicants will be reduced to 10 finalists who will then carry out a pilot project.