FINAT, the international association for the self-adhesive labeling industry, reports that the sixth meeting of the L9 took place in Tokyo on April 3rd. The L9 is the informal, global platform that brings together nine leading regional trade associations for the self-adhesive label and narrow web converting industry. The platform was founded in December 2009 at Labelexpo Asia in Shanghai. Subsequent meetings were held at the FINAT Technical Seminar in Barcelona, Labelexpo North Americas in Chicago, the TLMI Converter Meeting in Florida and Labelexpo Europe in Brussels.

The meeting in Tokyo was attended by the leaders of seven associations. Besides the hosting association JFLP, delegations from FINAT (Europe), TLMI (North America), LATMA (Australia), LMAI (India), PEIAC (China) and Ametiq (Mexico) traveled to Japan. The L9 further consists of the associations from Brazil (ABIEA) and New Zealand (SALMA).

The L9 was established in an effort to offer a global association network for information and knowledge exchange, joint industry promotion and collaboration on issues of common global importance. The meeting in Tokyo (co-hosted by local manufacturer Lintec), especially focused on the industry’s response to the challenge of environmental sustainability. For this purpose, the top management of two leading global players (Avery Dennison and UPM Raflatac) shared their companies’ perspective on this subject. Suntory, a major local beverage company, completed the scope from an end-users’ perspective. The subsequent dialog between label converters and their trade associations at this meeting produced recommendations to align efforts as an industry to stimulate environmental sustainability. Special focus will be on recycling in the label sector worldwide through collaboration on regional waste management strategies.

Other topics on the agenda included the World Label Awards framework, benchmarking standards and a survey of regional trends and developments. During this trip to Japan, delegates were also offered the opportunity to visit Toyota as well as Osaka Seal Printing and to discover best practice in kaizen, the continuous improvement in manufacturing philosophy that originated here.