ECMA on track with Roadmap 2015

Roadmap 2015 covers a number of points, covering sustainability, food safety and performance, to positioning of the European folding carton industry and ECMA itself.

ECMA marketing and communications committee chairman Jean-Francois Roche, speaking during the first morning of the ECMA Pro Carton Congress 2014, detailed some of the work that ECMA has done in respect to these topics, saying: ‘ECMA has successfully transformed itself into a networking organization for the European folding carton industry.’

To this end, since 2012, ECMA has seen the number of direct converter members grow from 31 to 39, with direct suppler members up from 26 to 35.

An additional national association has also joined since 2012, with a Polish national folding carton association established last year with ECMA's assistance, and a further two overseas members joining in the last 24 months. This has included India’s Parksons Packaging, taking the number of overseas ECMA members from India to three, with others from the Middle East, Asia and South America.

ECMA president Andreas Blaschke had already detailed how the 2014 congress was the biggest to date, with Roche revealing 233 people are scheduled to join in with the first day’s working program and 230 on the second. This compares to 150 and 142 at the 2013 ECMA Congress.

Further, nearly 300 are to be in attendance at the presentation of the Pro Carton ECMA Award 2014 prizes.

Roche also detailed some of the work of its ‘active forums’, such as the Young Leaders Forum that held its second meeting prior to the commencement of the 2014 congress, and the Tobacco Forum and Pharmaceutical Forum, which are both providing representation in important parts of the carton packaging market.

‘We are on track moving forward,’ said Roche. ‘We are doing a good job but there is still lots of work to do.’