The FTA celebrated its 65th anniversary at Forum & INFOFLEX 2023, as attendees gathered from April 16-19 in Columbus, OH, USA, to learn about the latest trends and flexographic printing technologies.

Forum featured a wide range of industry experts, who delivered strategies for topics that spanned sustainability and workforce development to color management and tape selection.

In addition to the expansive Forum schedule, FTA held INFOFLEX, an industry tradeshow with numerous suppliers, for the 41st time. INFOFLEX also featured Innovation Central, with flexographers exploring sustainability, new printing technology, troubleshooting, press and prepress advancements, inks, implementation roadmaps and more.

With a theme of “Reimagining Tradition,” industry leaders touted the newest technology advancements in reshaping flexo in the future. With more speed and automation, the flexographic process has significantly improved over the years.

“We want you to reimagine the tradition, and we’ve provided a lot of interactivity and motion to keep you engaged,” said Robb Frimming, president, FTA. “And INFOFLEX is building on the future. What you’re seeing is many product introductions, especially at Innovation Central. We want you to take what you have and learn how to use and build on future technologies.”

As session co-chair Jason Cagle, MacDermid Graphics Solutions, noted, the event strived to fight against the common refrain of “how we’ve always done it.”

Plus, FTA also hosted the Excellence in Flexography Awards at the opening night reception, as 71 print samples were recognized. During the awards, FTA’s Joe Tuccitto was inducted into the FTA Hall of Fame. Meanwhile, Bob Coomes and Bobby Congdon each received a 2023 FTA President’s Award for their support of FTA’s initiatives. RKW Finland Oy/Marvaco Oy and Sun Chemical – along with two honorable mentions – were named in the 2023 FTA Sustainability Excellence Awards. Finally, AV Flexologic, MicroDynamics and Miraclon each received a 2023 FTA Technical Innovation Award.

Forum’s sessions covered all the top trends impacting label and package printing. For example, “Sustainable Business, Sustainable Planet” explored waste and energy opportunities, as well as how legislation is driving change. According to session co-chairs Julian Fernandez, Esko, and Justin Green, Comexi, 79% of converters see sustainability as an opportunity, but 76% don’t know enough about legislations. Meanwhile, only 12% have a clear sustainable strategy.

Sonoco’s Elizabeth Rhue focused on policy and regulations, along with Extended producer responsibility (EPR), complexities in labeling laws, and chemicals of concern moving forward.

“Ultimately, the goal is to drive a reduction in waste and a use of recycled materials,” stated Rhue. “The laws are all very nuanced from state to state, though. That creates challenges for suppliers on how to meet those goals.”

Label and packaging converters should expect ongoing material development to meet these goals, while also using more data to better quantify waste and recycling measures. Environmental metrics tracking might include emissions, energy usage, waste usage, waste generation (amount and sources) and more. Plus, companies need to align with key stakeholders to establish and understand sustainable targets.

“Our goal is to educate customers on sustainable solutions to see which ones suit them the best, and then explore the pros and cons of each materials,” commented Dan Collins of C-P Flexible Packaging. “ We do a lot of testing to generate data, and we establish test parameters to see the product will meet its intended lifecycle. It’s critical to align with customers and build an expanded sustainability solution and explain the differences of various technologies with customers.”

“We need innovation to solve this problem,” added Mike Ferrari. “We need a disruptive solution to capture all packaging waste, not just plastics.”

Innovation extends to the ongoing workforce crisis, too. FTA assembled a comprehensive panel to tackle, “Find ’em, Train ’em, Keep ’em: 21st Century Flexographer.” The session discussed recruiting, training, and retention for flexo employees in a complex work environment. According to Regan Mercado, a student at California Polytechnic State University, LinkedIn, Handshake, word of mouth, attending industry events like FTA, and career fairs are all valuable ways for prospective print employees.

“Career fairs are incredibly important to get your company’s name out there and to show what flexo has to offer,” explained Sabrina Baez, Lab Tech II at Sun Chemical. “That’s how I got my foot in the door at Sun Chemical.”

For hirers, creativity is key. “We’re looking for employees in a lot of diverse places,” noted Jason Barrier, director, Graphics Services at Printpack. “Internships have been a great thing for us because you develop a long-term relationship with those universities and institutions. This event is an opportunity for a lot of us, too. It used to be the post and pray method, and now it’s a full marketing strategy to a very intentional employment strategy for your company.”

Affinity HR’s Claudia St. John emphasized better brand messaging for the print and packaging industry. “This is a sexy industry, so you need to start telling the story of what makes this great,” she said. “Sing to the world all the things you do amazingly every day.”

AWT Label & Packaging’s Shawn Oetjen crunched the numbers on the cost of constantly replacing an endless cycle of employees.

According to Oetjen, coaching employees is critical, and having a mentor is critical to their success. Employees want to be seen and they want to be heard, he added. “Most of us in this industry can identify someone who impacted us in a positive way, and it helps vitalize what the mentors do as well,” said Oetjen.

In his experience, AWT had a department of 12 people that cycled through 27 employees in one year. A department with 225% annual turnover was confronted with replacement costs of 1.5-3 times annual salary.

“An $18 an hour job translates to $37,440, and at 1.5 times replacement cost is $56,160. A department with 27 employees equates to $1.5 million. There is a greater cost benefit to training and incentivizing current employees than constantly replacing them.

“We identified we had a problem and what we were doing was not working,” said Oetjen. “You may have to invest in training or add tools.”