At the meeting three new Vice Presidents in the Executive Committee were elected.
Colombo (Sri Lanka), November 2009 With the participation of 18 country representatives – Bangladesh, Brazil, China (2), Ghana, India, Japan, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey (2), UK and US – WPO (World Packaging Organisation) accomplished its second Board Meeting of 2009 in Colombo, capital of Sri Lanka, from November 17 to 20. The meeting, hosted by Sri Lanka Institute of Packaging and Packaging Development Centre, had the main purpose of defining new strategies and projects for 2010, as well as reviewing the results of 2009 plans and actions.
One of the most important decisions taken was the election of three Vice Presidents in the Executive Committee, whose main duty is to make the decisions faster and to continue projects in between the two annual meetings, besides giving the WPO President total support. Each Vice President will also be responsible for the leadership of its area of responsibility as they are Dogan Erberk, from ASD Turkey responsible for Information and Statistics; Luciana Pellegrino, from ABRE Brazil responsible for Marketing and Communication, and Thomas Schneider, from IoPP US responsible for Sustainable Development strategies.
Other important decisions taken in the Sri Lanka WPO board meeting were:
- The introduction of the second phase of the Marketing & Communication plan, presented by Luciana Pellegrino, from Brazil, that intends to reinforce WPO international and institutional position. According to the plan it is important to have a cause for the society and to create specific programs that tell people what WPO is doing in terms of education, technology, etc in a way to create partnerships that result in benefits to the packaging community as a whole. All projects should be based in the WPO mission “Better quality of life through better packaging for more people”.
- Funding of a project in Africa to support the region and help it dealing with the hunger problem through packaging. The idea is to finance the creation of a packaging institute in an African country to follow the successful models of Ghana and Nigeria.
- The approval of a new Education Program that will run physically in India and will have a web based element managed by The Packaging Society, UK. The two week programme is planned to take place in March 2010, where the last 2-4 days are targeted at e-learning modules from the UK. A similar program was supposed to happen in 2009 but for cost reasons it was postponed.
- Tom Schneider, from IoPP – Institute of Packaging Professional, US, presented a proposal of new membership rules; the main change is related to members’ responsibilities. The general idea is to incentivise members to participate in WPO meetings that are generally held twice a year. Member attendance at these meetings is considered essential to the strength and progress of the Organization. The Board recommended that a new version should be drafted and analyzed in detail by the Vice Presidents, before presentation to the Board for decision.
- It was decided that for the next three years The Packaging Society, a WPO member from UK, will be responsible for the WorldStar competition administration. In general terms, this means receiving all the entries, preparing them for judging, and planning for the award ceremony. The details regarding the 2010 competition will soon be announced.
- For 2010 and 2011, the Student WorldStar will be organized by CEPI – Chinese Export Packaging Institute. Historically the first edition was organized by the Sri Lankan Institute of Packaging, the next two by the Turkish Packaging Manufacturers Association (ASD) and the latest two by Packtec (Tunisia).
Press information and pictures request:
Liliam Benzi – [email protected] - +55 11 9989-1597