President's report

Under normal circumstances, the annual FINAT President's Report would have been presented at the General Assembly on the occasion of the European Label Forum. This year, for reasons well-known, the FINAT members met in a virtual setting on 27 August last.

FINAT President Chris Ellison briefly reported about the activities which had taken place since the last forum in Copenhagen in June 2019:

• Converter Roundtables: an initiative designed to provide an independent platform for label printing company executives to discuss non-controversial items on the industry’s boardroom agendas;
• Relaunch of the Young Professionals Network: formerly known as the Young Managers Club;
• #LABELicious Competition: to attract the attention of students and young professionals as prospective members of the label industry workforce;
• Labelexpo Europe 2019: a bigger FINAT booth showcasing the winners of the #LABELicious & label competition and providing briefings on a number of topics;
• UV FoodSafe Group: an industry collaboration platform that aims to create confidence within end-user and converter communities in the use of UV printing in food packaging and labels through education and the provision of application specific best practice, enabling the consistent delivery of compliant print to the market;
• Recycling Consortium: a global initiative, for the common goal of further increasing the collection, repurposing, and recycling of spent pre-consumer liner and matrix waste materials in Europe;
• Label Community: contacts with national (NAB) and regional (L9) label associations;
• Buddy Programme: developed by the Marketing Committee to consolidate and expand our association’s talent pool of competent Board and committee leaders and contributors;
• Regulatory Affairs: the continuous monitoring of EU directives, advocating the industry's interest and the introduction of FINAT's new Public Affairs Manager Pablo Englebienne;
• Statistics: the label market developments as shown in the Radar twice a year.

On behalf of the FINAT Board, Mr Ellison thanked all volunteers and their companies for their continued support. The Board was especially appreciative of the patience, understanding and goodwill shown by members for the difficult decisions that had to be taken in cancelling or rescheduling the FINAT events.

"The shared values and beliefs that are the result of long-standing tradition of networking, friendship building, collaboration, and mutual understanding are the vitamins to overcome the current shortage of live social contact which is the lifeblood of all associations," Mr Ellison said.

The minutes of the virtual General Assembly 2020 can be found online (members only).