Page 46 - Packaging News magazine March_April 2023

LABELS & LABELLING
From creation to consumer
The Flexible Packaging and Label Manufacturers Association conference saw a host of industry leaders present key learnings, as the industry wrestles with sustainability. Wayne Robinson reports.
THE MAIN SPEAKERS
Speaking at the event opening, Anthony Dalleore, secretary of the FPLMA, said, “Our overseas speaker contingent has never been so strong, and this is com- plemented by having industry leaders and FMCG companies speak at the conference.”
Speakers covered topics ranging from developing standards relating to mate- rial design for recyclability, through to printing concepts, and how they fit into sustainability.
A touch of realism was brought by opening day keynote speaker Taylor Nugent, an economist from NAB, who said he expected interest rates to hit 4.5 per cent before they stabilised and could go back down.
The first session was Smart Systems for Smart People. Cath Cornaggia, commercial director at Avery Dennison, opened, and highlighted the need for the industry to embrace the digital with the physical, saying extensive research was revealing that connected packaging would become the norm in the future. She said in a world where plenty of people were
DELEGATES TO THE annual two-day Flexible Packaging and Label Manufacturers Association
(FPLMA) conference were treated to the biggest line-up of overseas speak- ers the event has ever hosted.
Under the theme ‘creation to con- sumer’, some 17 presentations were grouped in seven separate sessions, with virtually all of them suggest- ing approaches to tackle the public’s increasingly antagonistic, and some may
say, uneducated, view on packaging, par- ticularly plastic packaging, which is so necessary to our modern lives. As one speaker said, “It is not plastic that is the problem, that has myriad benefits, it is what we do with it post-consumer that needs serious action.”
The two-day event, held at Crowne in Melbourne, culminated in the Awards Dinner, which saw the best label and packaging jobs acclaimed in front of several hundred guests.
46 ❙ MARCH – APRIL 2023
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