Page 38 - Print21 magazine Mar-Apr 2023

Conferences | FPLMA
Speaking at the FPLMA Forum (clockwise from far left): Leigh Hooper, Ball & Doggett; Cath Cornaggia, Avery Dennison; Chris Foley, APCO; Peter Woods, Bobst; Zaidee Jackson, Ball & Doggett; Gavin Rittmayer, Martin Automatic; Tim Klappe,
MPS Systems; and Doug Carmeron, DIC Inks
population would drive plastic packaging growth, particularly in sanitary products.
Leigh Hooper, general manager at Ball & Doggett, outlined why supply chain issues were calming down from the 2021/22 crisis, providing
a superb barrage of data, which showed among other insights that shipping containers were now back to their pre-Covid prices having spiked to five times that price, and that delivery target times were also on the way back.
He said, “The supply chain crisis taught us that we need have a plan B, and a plan C.”
Hooper’s colleague Zaidee Jackson, sustainability manager at Ball & Doggett, said the mission
was ‘how and now’ if the industry was to meet the concerns of the public, noting that 80 per cent of flexible packaging ends up in landfill and only four per cent of flexibles are recycled. She called on each business to develop its own roadmap for sustainability.
The day ended with print production developers presenting. Doug Cameron from DIC Inks, part of the giant Sun Chemicals business, said the company was racing to develop bio-renewables for ink manufacturing, and said it is pigments that are holding up the 100 per cent target, which is the aim in the move away from petro- chemical ingredients.
Chiara Prati, CEO of converting and embellishing systems operation Prati Italy, said digital embellishment eliminated waste and enabled
users to distinguish themselves, and pointed to the Prati systems with digital screen, digital foiling, digital doming and digital cutting.
Finally Peter Woods from Bobst said flexibles, folding carton, corrugated board and labels were all growing at more than five per cent CAGR in Australia. And he said there was a gap between digital and flexo printing that hybrid all
in one systems, such as the Bobst DigiMaster could address.
Delegates attending the FPLMA conference would have been left in no doubt that sustainability is the
big issue for the industry, and their businesses, but would have been mightily encouraged by both the market growth reports, and the way solutions developers are producing systems that will enable them to work with the opportunities.
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Hayes pointed out that APCO
has just created five Material Stewardship Committees, to cover rigid plastics, flexible plastics,
glass, fibre and metal. He said,
“The challenge is complex but not insurmountable. We can get there.” Achieving the volume of recycled material in plastic packaging without compromising product quality and consumer safety is occupying the minds of packaging scientists.
According to Hayes, and Chris Foley who spoke next, the national packaging 2025 targets will struggle to be met in some areas, particularly plastic packaging recycling.
Foley, the new CEO of APCO, told delegates that “we are at a pivotal point” and said this year would see a huge focus on sustainability and packaging. Foley said the recycling rates for plastic in packaging were lagging well behind the 70 per cent target set for 2025, and pointed out that plastic usage was increasing per head of population. He said resetting community confidence in recycling in light of the REDcycle collapse was going to be a major challenge for the industry.
Plastic, according to Foley, is a victim of its own success – durable, protective, transparent, and cheap. Its market growth has supercharged in recent years, from 15kg per person in 2012 to 21kg in 2021. He said, “There is no doubt we need systems wide structural solutions, and we really need to regain consumer confidence in recycling, which has collapsed following REDcycle.”
Foley finished by saying, “The consequences of not moving forward could be quite punitive from the government. It’s game on.”
Gavin Rittmayer from web splicing, rewinding and tension control systems developer Martin Automatic in the US spelled out the challenge of ‘making money for our shareholders while meeting government and consumer needs.’
He gave a detailed presentation on waste reduction, which he said was key to the sustainability debate. According to Rittmayer, a typical flexible packaging print operation could save 21 tonnes of landfill a year, and $220,000 by activating
a full suite of waste reduction programmes.
MARKET TO GROW
Tim Klappe, from label and packaging press manufacturer MPS Systems, outlined why he believed run lengths of between 1000sqm and 25,000sqm were ideally suited to narrow web printing. He said that the flexo market was set to grow by a decent 5.2 per cent CAGR over the next five years. Klappe says the narrow web presses used for labels could be used for flexibles.
Next up was the team that presented at the Print21+PKN LIVE event on the Hungry Jack’s integrated Uno campaign, led by Michael Dossor from Result Group, essentially giving the same presentation, and
the day ended with a presentation on the ePac operation in Melbourne, led by its CEO Jason Brown, and Craig Walmsley, country manager ANZ for HP Industrial.
Day two kicked off with Sante Conselvan president of the European FTA, and Koki Noritake, the 27-year-old CEO of major flexo printer Noritake Japan providing an international perspective. Noritake said the rapidly ageing Japanese
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