2016 FTA President’s Award Recognizes Sante Conselvan, a Prominent International Ambassador

Sante Conselvan 2016 FTA President's AwardThe criteria used to select individuals for the annual FTA President’s Award was formed by a conscious decision made in 1991 when the tribute was originally established. Doing so allowed for the year to year recognition of a wide variety of contributions that people make to this organization directly, as well as to the worldwide flexographic business community.

A great deal of innovation and industry cooperation has originated all over the world and FTA strives to create international collaborative partnerships in order to optimize its value to member companies. We must accept the fact that the world is growing smaller every day!

The recently formed Pan-European umbrella organization—FTA Europe—has come together as a result of a great deal of work on the part of many individuals. In recognition of his determination as a driving force in its formation and acceptance by the respective country associations, Sante Conselvan of GAMA International is this year’s recipient of the FTA President’s Award.

As president of ATIF (Associazione Tecnica Italiana per la Flessografia), Sante spearheaded the FTA Europe formation initiative in the fall of 2013 by inviting all European flexographic associations to a meeting to discuss the creation of an organizational network to exchange information and ideas in a collective manner, in order to avoid wasting resources duplicating efforts. The stated goal was to share technical information, experiences, data and even technical experts as a means of improving knowledge and shortening development cycles, thereby saving time and money. As Sante very appropriately put it, “Each European market is comparatively small, but combined, we are huge!”

During its initial formative stage, Sante’s influence in bringing the founding Flexographic Technical Associations together—Benelux, France, Italy, Spain and the U.K.—led to FTA Europe being formally established in February of 2015. The three major objectives of the organization are to:

  • Encourage technical standardization and the dissemination of standards of practice across European borders
  • Develop a European curriculum and certificate for professionals
  • Support member associations through joint European advocacy, as well as collaboration of promotional activities (awards) and the development of a technical knowledge resource

Sante’s belief that the establishment of FTA Europe is an important step forward for the European flexographic community was not only shared by the founding member associations, but also by the management and leadership of FTA-USA.

Upon completion of the necessary organizational foundational steps, Sante initiated communications with FTA management to address opportunities that exist to begin thinking about the sharing of established resources between the U.S. and European marketplaces. An invitation was extended to FTA President Mark Cisternino and Director of Education Joe Tuccitto to participate in November’s ATIF FlexoDay 2015, to provide presentations to its membership on market activity in North America and the newest developments in Flexographic Image Reproduction Specifications & Tolerances (FIRST) 5.1. During the visit, Sante participated in further discussions focused on creating a bridge between FTA Europe and FTA-USA in order to provide additional value added benefits for their respective member companies. As he so eloquently put it, we all speak one common language… and that is flexo!

For this year’s FTA President’s Award, FTA is proud to recognize Sante Conselvan, a true international ambassador, for his leadership and determined efforts to unify the people, associations and countries that make up the worldwide flexographic business community. Grazie per il tuo lavoro e la tua amicizia, Sante!