Last month, the Malta Printing Industry Association held its annual international conference entitled Technological Developments in the Printing Industry: Planning the way forward, at the Corinthia Palace Hotel, Attard.

The event was opened by Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and the Self Employed Edwin Vassallo, MPIA presi-dent Margaret Buhagiar and Malta Enterprise representative Dennis Vella.

This year’s conference looked at the graphic industry’s recent past and its current developments, along with its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, instruments for companies to cope with continuous changes and the industry’s future. The main aim was to help companies develop strategic plans and plan a way forward in a changing and increasingly competitive workplace.

The main speaker was Gerrit Roseboom from The Netherlands. Mr Roseboom spoke about the Dutch printing experience, the changes in customers’ demands and the influence these have on the way printers have to deal with them.

Sanatech Group managing partner Stephen Axisa gave a brief introduction to benchmarking and how such tools can support the management of a company.

Also of great interest to the local scene was HSBC’s presentation by Anthony Busuttil, who spoke about Invoice Banking, a relatively new HSBC service being introduced to the local business community.