FTA Announces 2017 Forum theme, venue and chairs

The Flexographic Technical Association (FTA, Bohemia, N.Y.), organizers of the largest annual gathering for the package printing and converting industry (FTA’s Annual Forum), have announced Trending Now as the official theme of its 2017 event. More than 2,000 trendsetters representing every segment of the supply chain will attend the April 30-May 3, 2017 event, held at the Sheraton Grand Phoenix Hotel in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. The forum’s agenda embraces today’s hottest topics and trends. Topics will cover critical business intelligence that’s “trending now” – everything from tackling legal and regulatory issues to meeting the challenge of finding qualified press operators, to analysis of disruptive technologies. Flexo’s essentials of inks, anilox rolls, substrates, plates, prepress practices, and statistical process control, will also receive critical attention throughout the technical program.
The sessions will include:

• Flexo: Legals, Markets and Logistics.
• The “Press Crew” Crisis: Now Who’s Going to Run My Press?
• Disruptive Technologies: Embrace the Possibilities.
• It’s All About Ink!
• Let’s All Get RIPed: Practical Prepress.
• Pressroom Pressures.
• Corrugated.
• Not Only How to Use, But How to Choose: Flexo Consumables 101.
• Surveying Production Performance: Flexography 102.

In addition, the program agenda will offer a complimentary pre-conference session hosted by the Flexo Quality Consortium (FQC), dubbed #Research! Program development is being led by Forum Chairs, Paul Teachout of Nilpeter, and Bob Coomes of Plastic Packaging Technologies. Abstract reviews, speaker selection and session format determination is currently underway. The ultimate objective is “to build a stellar educational agenda of what’s trending now for launch in April of 2017.”
Coinciding with Forum 2017 is the INFO*FLEX Exhibition that celebrates its 35th anniversary in 2017. The event takes place May 1-2 at the Phoenix Convention Center. Attendees can anticipate a busy convention hall occupied by over 300 of the industry’s top suppliers and their solutions, providing for two days of intensive networking activity and side-by-side comparisons of the latest technologies. Over 85% of the total 310 booths have already been sold. For more information and to reserve booth space now, please contact Jay Kaible, FTA Director of Business Development, at jkaible@flexography.org. For more information about FTA’s 2017 Annual Forum or its INFO*FLEX Exhibition, please visit www.flexography.org or contact FTA Marketing Manager Eileen Cosma at ecosma@flexography.org.
The Flexographic Technical Association (FTA) is a professional society dedicated to bringing all members of the flexographic printing community (printers, suppliers, consumer product companies, institutions, prepress houses and others) together by providing opportunities for the free exchange of technical ideas and discussion of mutual concerns. It’s a leader in maintaining and advancing quality standards and includes 1,650 member sites that represent more than 1,400 companies and 35,000 individuals. The Foundation of the FTA, founded in 1974, is the educational arm of FTA that’s dedicated to supporting and advancing the flexographic printing industry.