Page 33 - FINAT Yearbook 2019

industry, and launched this year a successful and inspiring student label design competition, #LABELicious, with the winners to be announced during Labelexpo Europe 2019.
THE INDUSTRY DEBATE
FINAT consultant Bert van Loon (NL) and Corey Reardon of AWA then went on to chair an audience debate on the current state of the evolving label printing industry, in which label printers are increasingly experiencing the need to become marketing companies and their sales people consultants or engineers. The animated hour-long debate covered
opportunities and challenges across its extended supply chain, including such key topics as the supply chain’s relationship with brand owners; the strong need for collaboration across the supply chain to deliver an acceptable product to its customers; and the skills base required of the future label converter workforce. The importance of recycling, design for recycling, and plastics in packaging were also explored. Here, Corey Reardon underlined that it is ‘human behaviour, not plastic, that is at fault.
Consumer behaviour has to change.’
ACTION STATIONS!
It was the task of Fredrik Härén (SE) to close the formal agenda on a positive and practical note. This keynote international speaker and author on business, creativity, change, and global business pointed
delegates in the direction of ‘re-creating your value proposition: turning ideas from the ELF 2019 into action’. Commenting that the FINAT ELF was ‘a very unusual industry conference’, he embarked on a journey that explored the definition of an idea as p=(k+i) – a combination of person, knowledge, and information. A successful idea, he said, must be different -- and better; and the world of creativity, where ideas thrive, is all about positive change. Change must be seen, understood, embraced, and acted upon – and, as the delegates had already heard, it certainly involves copying, as Fredrik Härén showed with dramatic examples from both history, and the current world. What, he asked, could the label industry copy? In the modern world, he emphasised, ‘we have gone in the last ten years from saying that some things are impossible to EVERYTHING is possible’...
On this note, Chris Ellison closed the conference, highlighting the special pre-forum converter-only round tables, which provided an in-depth opportunity for label printers to discuss strategic topics relevant to the industry’s future. He had seen how delegates had also enjoyed, and benefited from, the extensive networking opportunities around the substantial tabletop exhibition, as well as the ‘off duty’ entertainment. He highlighted the FINAT Label Industry Awards presentations, held on the first evening, and thanked the event’s generous sponsors – a broad, and this year, even wider selection of leading industry suppliers – and the FINAT management team for organising such a unique event
Adding that next year’s event will take place in Rome (3-5 June), he said that, ‘in the FINAT family, the European Label Forum certainly gives us an annual opportunity to reconnect!’
The industry debate
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