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.”

Quotes from exhibitors and speakers: 

Jaime Dagnino, CEO, AnyLabel Systems: "Label Summit Latin America in Santiago attendance was great. The conference sessions delivered a wealth of information related to our industry. It was an honor to have had the opportunity to contribute as a speaker during the conference." 

Markus Marfurt, president, Electro-Optic: “RotoMetrics and Electro-Optic had quite a successful event. We saw many existing customers but what caught our attention was the number of leads collected especially from countries like Chile, Argentina and Peru.  Label Summit Latin America 2017 was the first show in which RotoMetrics and Electro-Optic presented themselves as one company, this was well received by our customers that see this merger as a great way to benefit from the commercial and technical strengths that this union offers. Congratulations to Comercial Roldos from Chile who won the raffle of a magnetic Cylinder among the customers who visited our booth.”

Luciano Ramaccioni de Sousa, sales manager, ERREPI srl: “Our first participation at a Label Summit Latin America was extremely interesting and positive and we have no doubt we will have positive feedback from it. We received a high number of new contacts not only from Chile, but also from other South American countries, especially Argentina. It was a good occasion to personally meet many companies that we were already in contact with before. All the visitors showed an interest toward our full product range, in particular forward our automatic no stop turret rewinder Leonardo and our die-cutter machines. Thanks a lot to all organizers of the event that made these two days very enjoyable and interesting!”

Brian Wenger, president, GEW, Inc.: “For GEW the Label Summit Latin America in Chile was definitely the major event for the label printing industry in South America this year. At the GEW booth we presented our arc and LED UV curing solutions specifically targeted at label printing businesses in the food, personal care, wine and fruit & vegetable industries. Label Summit attendees were particularly receptive to our ArcLED hybrid UV offer which gives label printers the most cost-effective upgrade path to hybrid LED UV on their flexo presses.”  

Morten Toksværd, sales manager - global sales, Grafisk Maskinfabrik A/S: “GM is happy to have been part of one of the biggest events in the region dedicated to label and packaging printing. It has been a very positive event for GM, and we met with the majority of our customers in Chile, and others from the LATAM region and shared their vision on the solutions we have at their operations. Customers with our high end wine label converting equipment like Vinograf, Colorama, Eadec were very pleased to have been an important contribution in Jos Kabouw’s presentation.”

Natalia Lopes, Lemorau: “Label Summit Latin America 2017 was really successful for Lemorau. The number of visitors from around 10 different countries surpassed our expectations and generated good leads even though it was Lemorau’s first approach to the Chilean market. The feedback we had from all visitors showed us that our products fitted really well in the Chilean market as they looked for compact machines with good quality/price ratio. It was also an opportunity for Lemorau to receive with great pleasure some of its customers from Central and South America.”

Juan Pablo Patino Arevalo, regional manager, Nilpeter: “We believe that customers are looking for new technology in order to be able to reduce their production costs and increase their productivity. The Summit is an important event for Nilpeter. We exchange knowledge with our customers, and we also got to see our technology in action at Nilpeter open houses organized during the Summit. Andean, Central American, Argentinian, Uruguayan, Mexican, and other customers stopped by the Nilpeter booth to discuss the latest within advanced flexible packaging solutions and the benefits of the various printing technologies offered by Nilpeter. We look forward to joining the Label Summit next year in Mexico - an important country for our industry."

Alexis Cruz, Latin American sales director, YUPO Corporation: “The Labelexpo team did a knockout job; Label Summits continuously improve year after year. No better way for YUPO to demonstrate its commitment to our Latin American customers than by participating in this great event. We look forward to Guadalajara 2018.”