Second Label Summit Africa closes to positive response

Label Summit Africa 2014 took place in Cape Town on March 10-11 and attracted 279 senior delegates who discussed local and global issues, and heard about applying new technologies and finding new ways to develop business strategies.

Attendees included label and packaging converters, designers, industry suppliers and brand owners with representatives from Appletiser, DairyBelle, Parmalat and Unilever in attendance.

The conference program featured 14 sessions including a mix of technical presentations, business case studies and panel discussions.

Xeikon’s Filip Weymans, who delivered the keynote presentation that outlined the growing importance of personalization and how packaging is acting as a trigger in creating positive emotions between the consumer and brands, said: ‘Label Summit Africa fits with Xeikon’s strategy in terms of educating the market upon trends, technology and opportunities. Although it is clear that Africa provides good opportunities it doesn’t come for free and requires investment of time to bring the knowledge across. This summit has been the ideal event to reach a broad range of people and share a whole range of ideas.’

Pascal Duchene of Codimag said: ‘Label Summit Africa 2014 has been a good opportunity to better understand the South African market specifically and meet local label market players. We are excited by the potential business development.’

Jepser Joergensen of Nilpeter said: ‘Nilpeter is reinforcing its position on the growing African label and package printing market. Label Summit Africa constituted an excellent platform for strengthening our network. We were particularly happy to meet so many existing and new customers from Nigeria, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya. At the event, the Nilpeter team presented advanced packaging solutions in flexo and offset and prime label solutions with the latest high-end flexo technologies. It is our hope that future events on the African continent will attract even more converters from both East and West Africa.’

Stéphane Rateau of SMAG added: ‘These Label Summits are always interesting to learn about local markets: label printers, rules of the market, growing of the local market, actors and major suppliers.

‘This is in fact a real Who’s Who in life. For the SMAG side, the goal of our visit to Label Summit Africa has been achieved as we have established a partnership with the company Sareltech as exclusive distributor for South of Africa. Sareltech is a medium size company well established since many years in Cape Town, very service oriented and currently distributor of BST (web guide and camera inspection system).’

Flint Group’s Niklas Olsson added: ‘Label Summit Africa was great evidence of what happens when you bring this creative industry together. All who were there left the event with new knowledge and information that will make our respective companies better suited to take the right decisions for the future to come.

‘We learned about the challenges that are for real in Africa and also about the innovative spirit that drives change that makes this industry something special. We are happy to support events like this bringing the industry together and enable everyone in the industry to grow and develop further.’

The summit also included a table-top exhibition featuring the likes of Flint Group, Kemtek Imaging Systems, MPS, New Africa Inks, Nilpeter, Nuova Gidue, Omet, Paragon Inks South Africa, Prati and Xeikon.

Lisa Milburn, managing director of Labelexpo, said: ‘Label Summit Africa 2014 has proved to be a very thought provoking and valuable event. Feedback from our delegates has been hugely positive with many attendees maximizing their time here to network with their peers and develop new working alliances.

‘We are seeing the South African label and packaging industry evolve in sophistication as consumers engage more with brands which has brought about more of a pull rather than push sales and marketing culture and mentality. Like much of Africa and the emerging market countries as a whole, the South African label industry is experiencing a strong period of growth at 6 percent each year and this will be maintained as the young middle class demographic continues to expand and drive demand.’