Converting Today now has a new owner: last month its publisher, Wilmington Media, together with sister company Dewberry Redpoint, were acquired from the Wilmington Group by Progressive Media Publications. Progressive is a new force in the business to business publishing industry with ambitious plans and we have been acquired as the base for those plans.
I am confident that its arrival will open up a new and exciting chapter for this magazine and our partners, Packaging Today and RFID Solutions.
Helping to take Converting Today forward from this point will be my newly appointed associate editor, Sonali Advani. Sonali joins us from a healthcare industry publication, but she already has a good pedigree for the world of converting from her earlier role as editor of PrintCom Asia and PrintCom India. With this experience she brings a first hand insight into one of the most rapidly developing areas of the global market.
To continue with the forward looking theme, a large part of this issue is devoted to a preview of next month's number one plastics industry show, K 2007. With more than 2,900 companies exhibiting at the Düsseldorf Messe, visitors can expect a veritable feast of innovations to be on view - along with ample opportunities to make plenty of good contacts to help progress their businesses.
Our show preview (see Exhbitions section) offers a selected range of 'K' exhibits to whet the appetite, while the film conversion feature reviews a number of the key technical developments and market trends from this major area of our industry.
Environmental awareness has probably never been more widespread than it is today. The need to do as much as possible to save energy and resources is now imperative. One company taking a lead to tackle waste - and increase its own business - is UK based prepress and packaging design specialist Corniche, which plans a major survey of manufacturers' packaging needs (see news section).
Business development director Dave Ettie says: “Shelf ready packaging offers us a major opportunity as manufacturers face up to the increasing legislation governing the disposal of waste. Our first task is to find out exactly what the manufacturers' needs are and then to demonstrate to them that we can replace litho laminate with flexo post printing without losing any of the quality.”
It will be interesting to see what this initiative will achieve.
Mike Taylor
Editor
ME
