Page 11 - FINAT Yearbook 2019

General Assembly 2019 in Copenhagen
FINAT PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2019
In his second year as FINAT President, Chris Ellison (OPM Group, UK) presented an update of our associa- tion’s activities in the past 12 months at FINAT’s General Assembly held in Copenhagen last June. Below follows an extract of his report.
“Our industry’s demand cycle presented last year has proven an early signal of growing economic uncertainty in Europe. The investment boom of recent years, especially in digital, is slowing down and let’s hope Labelexpo will be a catalyst for a rebound next September. In a slowing economy, marketing our industry’s innovative solutions in areas like product branding, smart labelling, food safety and circularity is of eminent importance. And in the face of an ageing population and changing skillsets, initiatives are being taken to reach out to the next generation of talented business leaders, engineers and designers.
FINAT’s greatest value lies in the peer-to-peer networking, the connection of industry experts, the exchange of knowledge and experience, and the collaboration of volunteers and professionals. It’s all about the people, and after 60 years of
FINAT, these four key ingredients continue to define FINAT’s success in linking the label community.
In line with our mission to represent the interests of the self-adhesive label industry and related narrow-web product decoration and identification solutions providers, we have embarked on a strategic journey towards our future vision, which is to lead the way to future success for international label businesses. Our ‘roadmap’ towards the next decade is based on 6 navigating principles for the coming years: ‘LEADERSHIP’; ‘TECHNOLOGY’, ‘SUSTAINABILITY’, ‘COMMUNITY’, ‘POSITIONING’ and, since last year, ‘WORKFORCE’.
Let me now report back to you what each of these 6 propositions means, which activities took place under these headers and what our planning is for the coming year.
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