The new Federation, which was introduced last June at Museo dei Navigli in Milan, aims at representing the printing supply chain, and it is open to any other association related to the sector

Continued from Part 2

That's why Assografici and Acimga, after carrying out an in-depth internal survey and confronting their views with Confindustria's, made a decision to co-operate each other in a concrete way and to share current and future printing trends, not in order to achieve perfection, which maybe doesn't exist, but to develop a better leadership capability and have a stronger ascendancy towards institutions, when presenting them their own issues.
      In addition, although each association will keep its autonomy, the new federation will be able to ensure its members important synergies in supplying services, including all subjects concerning internationalization up to surveys about the economic situation, forecasts and communication with institutions, especially with the most important commissions being authorized to issue technical rules."
      At the end of his speech, Eng. Capodieci read a message coming from Confindustria's President, Emma Marcegaglia, who congratulated on the establishment of Federgrafica and expressed the hope that other associations may join it.

"PAPER IS BEAUTIFUL" AND "PACKAGING MEANS SAFETY"
The interesting speech, given by the well-known sociologist Enrico Finzi, aroused great enthusiasm. It was focused on the future of paper printing and the use of packaging. Please find below a summary of the key concepts.
      "One of the food packaging functions, which has always been regarded as less important, is food protection, but now we have become aware of the fact that, if we want to eat safe food, packaging has to ensure some key functions. For example, I have been making many researches concerning the sealing methods of Tetra Pak's milk and fruit-juice packs. Today, product protection is related, much more than in the past, to one of packaging positive values, that is safety. Today's paper and board packages ensure consumers product protection, and, moreover, thanks to their printable surfaces, they also give important information about their contents. Last but not least, there is a strong demand for package traceability and differentiation on sales-point shelves.
      This demand can be fully met thanks to eye-catching graphics as well as special upgrading and finishing, but without exaggerating, otherwise consumers might feel confused. Also multifunctional packaging solutions can be interesting and successful", said Prof. Finzi.
      As we are going through a stage of collective uncertainty, people want traditional and simple things, therefore it is important not to exaggerate with extreme graphic solutions, that would make packaging too complex.
      "As far as paper printing is concerned, several surveys have highlighted the groundlessness of the belief, according to which the advent of Internet would compromise printing. In Italy any new means of communication is fully integrated with the existing ones, but without eliminating them.
      This had already happened with the advent of television, when everybody thought that it would have eliminated the use of radio, but today radio programmes have a growing audience rating. The same is happening between paper printing and Internet. Moreover, in a world that is increasingly aiming at slowness rather than speed, paper printing will be certainly revived, thus contradicting the initial objective, for which it was invented, that is speeding up the production of printed documents. Today with the advent of Internet, printing is regarded as a slow means of communication, that can help reflect and rationalize problems. Anyway, it is necessary to make paper image look younger, and to this purpose, associations should organize a promotional campaign aiming at re-launching paper image", concludes Prof. Finzi.

Courtesy of our media partner, Converter & Cartotecnica, www.converter.it

Mon Oct 06 10:14:00 CDT 2008