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MARKETING COMMITTEE
AND SUB-COMMITTEES
The FINAT Marketing Committee (MC), chaired by Jakob Landberg from Nilpeter (DK), undertakes to assist in promoting our self-adhesive labelling industry. The committee members represent a wide range of industry specialists, including label converters, direct and indirect suppliers − all of whom have a professional marketing and/or sales background. The MC is organised in a matrix of four sub- committees: the Congress Planning Committee; the PR and Communications committee; the Industry Trends Sub-committee; and, finally, the Awards sub-committee, which co-ordinates the annual FINAT Label Awards Competition and attendant ommunications. The planning and focus of the MC is annually presented to the FINAT Board for discussion and approval – thus ensuring that promotional targets are in line with the wishes of the FINAT members. The current MC has 18 members.
• Industry Trends Sub-committee: converting the future
The newly-established Industry Trends Sub-committee is chaired by Ferdi Rüesch from Gallus Ferd. Rüesch (CH) and is a merger of three smaller task forces in the MC. It has a clear focus on the future and trends in the label industry. The main tasks are to improve FINAT as an association, to learn more from our members, to determine market and technical trends in the label industry, and to encourage sustainability. Having held several brainstorming meetings and discussions, it has just recently set important strategic objectives on which to follow up.
“One of the areas of most attention is the succession planning for medium- sized nationally or internationally active converters. Our committee aims to identify the various
FINAT structure
alternative partnership strategies to help our members − for example, in the case of calamities. Many of the business owners and managers in our industry are preparing themselves for the future: to serve their customers at different locations, to generate purchasing synergies, to share technical know-how, and to find successors or shareholders,” says Ferdi. “It is the role of an international body like FINAT to provide the network, but also to connect this network to external expertise at universities and business consultants.”
He continues: “The label industry is still relatively fragmented and it is necessary to examine what happened in other industries regarding M&A, corporate structures, and market segmentation. We are trying to answer the question as to what the industry will look like in ten years’ time, to learn from other industries, and to prepare FINAT and our members well for the future”.
With members from all levels of the label industry value chain, the Industry Trends-Sub-committee is also observing and assessing the latest
market and technological trends and consulting the FINAT Board on strategic questions like the value of sustainability, key performance indicators, and benchmarking within the label industry.
• Congress Planning Committee (CPC): ensuring cohesion of the annual congress programme
Chaired by Noel Mitchell, UPM Raflatac (D), the so-called ‘CPC’ exists to select a topic or theme regarded as being of high or even vital importance to our industry. Its composition changes year-by-year, depending on the chosen host country and theme. Based around the chosen theme, a series of presentation topics and speakers are sought which most closely match it. These speakers, as well as the Congress Moderator, are chosen and booked for our event. According to Noel, “the theme chosen for 2012 is ‘Sustainable Labeling − now is your chance!’ as we are convinced that this is one of the most important subjects currently facing our industry. To this end, speakers whose subjects range from fact-based to awe-inspiring were selected. I would like to thank the members of the 2012 CPC for their dedicated work in this regard.” (See
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FINAT YEARBOOK 2012 |