The 14th edition of Label Summit Latin America attracted 815 attendees as it closed in Santiago’s Espacio Riesco. The two-day event’s combination of informative panel discussions and technical and practical presentations proved popular, with a higher than expected number of delegates from the region’s south attending.

Held in Chile for the first time, the Summit’s agenda addressed a number of topics including market trends and challenges, the application of new technologies and aspects of the wine labeling industry. It opened with a keynote presentation by Avery Dennison’s Ronaldo Mello and Ralph Olthoff which provided detailed analysis of the region’s wine labeling sector with a study of the marcoeconomic trends impacting it and where growth opportunities lie for the market looking ahead.

Further highlights from the opening day included Michel Sabelle of Asimpres and Ártica Impresores who explored the sector trends in labels, shrink sleeves, flexibles and folding cartons and developments in trading in Chile and the Southern Cone. With the market undergoing extensive consolidation, Acrus-CCL Label’s Aldo González looked at mergers and acquisitions. He highlighted the pitfalls to avoid and weighed up the benefits of forming new business associations such as: optimizing profitability, growing scale to reduce costs and increasing investment in resources. A panel discussion also featured a strong line-up with some of the region’s most prominent printers sharing their experiences of adopting new technologies, developing a blueprint for success and positioning their businesses to overcome national and international competition.

The second day started with a look at attracting skilled labor and retaining employees with participants including Vicky Godia Torres of Ingraf, Carlos Eichholz Piza from Colorama, Demarka and Ingraf and Escuela de la Industria Gráfica’s Víctor Castro Parada. They had much to discuss and told the room that technical training has to become a high priority for companies if they are to achieve and maintain a competitive level within the industry.

Gabriela Neves Ferri of Baumgarten focused on the ever-rising importance of the environment as she talked the audience through the company’s own successful strategy for becoming more sustainable. She explained how the converter has completed its first product life cycle assessment (LCA) study on the use of two different liners – PET and glassline – and measured the environmental impacts from the extraction of raw materials right through to customer delivery. 

Germark’s Iban Cid covered smart products and used customer case studies from Actimel, Alemany Honey, Caso Festina and Munich Sports to chronicle how the use of technology, such as augmented reality and RFID applications, can add value and increase the rate of units being sold.

The afternoon focused on wine label design and embellishment and included presentations on increasing sophistication in wine label decoration by Jos Kabouw of Grafisk Maskinfabrik and the changing role of converters in wine labeling by Jaime Dagnino at AnyLabel Systems and Colorama’s Carlos Scheuch. Hernán Braberman of Tridimage gave his expert insight into the latest wine and spirit packaging design strategies and delved into how millennials are changing the face of packaging design and how brands can define themselves through effective design. The Summit closed with a wine tasting workshop.

Running alongside the conference, show visitors were also able to source new suppliers and network with over 70 exhibiting companies. The table-top exhibition featured many leading suppliers including: Antalis, Armor, Avery Dennison, Bobst, Dow Corning, Durst, Epson, Esko, Etirama, Flint Group, Gallus, HP, Mark Andy, Nilpeter, Oji Papeis, Omet, Ritrama, SPGPrints, Sun Chemical and UPM Raflatac.

Tasha Ventimiglia, Americas event director, says: “As our first event in Chile, this year’s Summit was very highly anticipated. We are very pleased to report that it has been our second biggest-ever Summit to date with attendees coming from 28 countries including high numbers of Argentinian, Brazilian and Peruvian converters. The Summit has been very constructive and given us an excellent chance to better understand the Chilean market with our speakers sharing their first class insight and expertise. We hope our attendees have taken away new ideas and tips to implement in their own plants and help move the industry even further forward here. We look forward to returning to Guadalajara next April.”