In October 1960, 10 national carton associations founded ECMA. After a few years of careful bilateral contacts, a formal structure was established to engage in cross border communication, the exchange of market data and promote technical development of equipment.
These were the days of European post war recovery and the foundation of the European Economic Community. One of the first projects of the newly founded association was a study into the development of a new phenomenon called ‘supermarkets’, of which a number count revealed that there were less than 1000 in the participating countries.
Now, 50 years later, the EEC has become the EU, the world has become a global marketplace and consumer convenience has become the norm in the mature societies of today. This year’s congress celebrated five decades of engagement on the European scene, and took stock of where we are today and where we should go tomorrow.
Keywords for that future are ‘innovation’, ,food safety’ and ‘sustainability’ and ECMA secured a panel of expert speakers to address these topics. As last year, BBC Correspondent Nick Higham took the role of moderator and a new item in this year’s programme was the interactive ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ workshop that closed the congress. After last year’s success, the Business Information Market returned on this year’s agenda.
The ECMA congress has always been the premier meeting place for executives in the folding carton sector, and this anniversary congress again featured an exceptional programme and also many social networking activities.
Per Lundeen, the current President of ECMA opened the Congress by detailing how much the world had changed since 1960. The world population was, at 9 billion, now three times what it was then, OPEC was founded and supermarkets were in their infancy. He looked forward to an excellent congress that would focus on Innovation, Food safety and Sustainability and said that he was delighted that 162 delegates from 18 countries were attending and they were joined by many of the previous Presidents of ECMA who he warmly welcomed. The title of the Congress was "50 years of ECMA – revisiting our future" and the President felt that whilst it was always good to look back, it was more important to look forward.
