One year on

9 August 2012



A year after taking over as president of FINAT, the worldwide association for the self-adhesive labelling industry, Kurt Walker discusses the body’s current and future strategy


FINAT’s initial four-year strategy was built on four pillars: raising the profile of FINAT and ensuring a healthy growth; further strengthening it as the European umbrella organisation; offering more room for international business development and networking; and, finally, planting seeds in Asia. And fairly quickly we achieved the 600 member benchmark we had set ourselves and established The Label Printers Forum and the Young Managers Club, and both helped increase membership interest in entrepreneurial and management issues.

This success was followed by the agreement of four defined strategic intentions later extended to include the fifth: enhance the global associations network; improve our service to members by using new media technology; increase the synergies between the Board and committees; re-assess FINAT’s scope as a self-adhesive association; a clear agenda to promote sustainability and recycling.

Our relationship with national and international associations is central to our ethos, and over the past 10 years there has been tremendous evolution. Many national associations, especially in Europe, have moved from a purely volunteer-driven force to a more professional structure, helping to strengthen our operational ties.

Pan-European conversations with key decision-makers about their perceptions and expectations of FINAT as their European umbrella have helped us create a better mutual understanding. As I understand it, past discussions tended to focus on our differences, but we are now concentrating our energy on subjects where we have a common interest, such as recycling, best practice, and education.

We are now seeing the first tangible results. Thanks to a concerted effort, we have made a real impact in lobbying the European Commission. On the initiative of the Swedish association, the national associations have joined forces to commission AWA to develop and monitor industry-specific raw materials indices.

The German association has offered to upgrade its Occupational Health and Safety Best Practice Guide to European level, and an English translation is under review by the different associations. The Italian association is sharing its legal terms and conditions of sale and other industry guidelines. The German and French associations collaborated with FINAT on the first-ever ‘Operators’ Day’ at Labelexpo. The UK association adopted our Liner Recycling Brochure and proposed creation of a European good manufacturing practice guide for food labels. Pooling resources and sharing know-how can make us stronger than the sum of our individual parts.

The importance of L9

L9 started as an informal get-together of global label associations at Labelexpo Asia in 2009. Eight associations from across the globe met to exchange experiences, discuss common problems, and explore the possibilities for closer future interaction. Many topics were of a local nature but, as we talked, we found out that we also share several challenges in common. First of all, it’s a fact that many of the suppliers offering materials and technology to the label and narrow web industry are now global. A growing proportion of our members’ customers are also operating on a global scale. In response, our members are now reaching out on a global scale to adopt global standards, share best practices, establish global partnerships, expand their B2B network, and promote the versatility of our products to the world’s markets.

It seemed only logical that our associations would follow up on this global trail we had defined, so it was decided to meet on a more regular basis. One of the participants came up with the idea to use the name L8 for our informal platform. Now, a ninth association has joined, and we soon expect to welcome our 10th member.

While FINAT has its roots in Europe, we maintain a strong global outlook. One fifth of our membership is from outside Europe – Asia in particular . We believe international collaboration does not stop at the borders of Europe. That is why we have been a strong supporter of the L9 initiative. There is considerable benefit for our members in gaining a better mutual understanding of the comparative strengths, weaknesses and commonalities across the globe.

At the same time, FINAT members also have an interest in addressing certain matters on a global scale, but a platform for leading this was lacking. The L9 is therefore definitely fulfilling a need for our members.

L9 represents a group of associations from regions that are at different stages of the development cycle. On the one hand, there are the organisations from the mature regions in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia/New Zealand. On the other hand, there are the associations in the rapidly emerging regions like India, China, Brazil and Mexico. The developed regions have an established knowledge base and a rich history. The emerging regions have a short history, but a huge, unexplored market territory and an entrepreneurial mindset dedicated to uncovering that potential. We therefore have a lot to offer each other, and the benefit of the L9 lies in linking these strengths for the benefit of the entire sector.

The internet as a platform for exchange of knowledge and information is vital in today’s connected world. It is also a valuable tool for reducing the distance between FINAT and its members, and enabling a virtual network between members. Our new website and member community has more interactive features, and will soon even be supported by an iPhone App. FINAT is no longer just for the CEO and owners of the member companies.

Member development is a key target for 2013, so we are appointing a community manager to drive this area and help increase member engagement.

We are running an internet survey across the membership and the initial response has been strong. But we are also looking outside the association, as the biggest potential lies in the emerging countries in Eastern Europe, where it is under-represented. Most of the markets there come from a different association background, and are at a different stage of economic and business lifecycle, but there is definitely value for them in FINAT membership. That is why we are planning a roadshow.

When the Board set the strategy for the future, it was concluded that a certain degree of streamlining of committee work was necessary. For the last two years, most committee meetings have taken place back-to-back with board meetings, which has certainly facilitated a better ‘workflow’ and strengthened the personal contacts between volunteers serving in the different bodies in FINAT. I think we have now installed an effective framework, which is now also being implemented by the Marketing Committee. The main challenge now is to broaden the engagement of label converters in the work of FINAT.

Recycling and sustainability

FINAT has identified recycling and sustainability as key to the continued success of the self-adhesive label industry, and this is why we have re-established the recycling committee, and why the L9 meeting dedicated an entire session to this topic. Although collection and recycling are typically local activities and circumstances may vary across countries and even regions, there is still a benefit in joining forces internationally, to spark new ideas and to share knowledge and experiences

The results of the member survey should offer us interesting leads and insights for our future strategy. We will also continue our ongoing internal discussions on the scope of FINAT: should we widen our remit, and embrace narrow web converting as a full part of our territory, as TLMI and VskE have done; or should we retain our focus on self-adhesive, with an open eye to alternative decoration and conversion methods relevant to our core members?

Digital label printing is now fully part of our remit. I would also like to see a continued effort to strengthen the corporate culture of the label industry by offering management education programmes that transcend national borders.

Views expressed on this page are those of the author and may not be shared by this publication.


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