Almanac of the year
BY STEFANO LAVORINI. Slavoj Žižek writes: «Today we don’t know what to do, but we have to act immediately, because the consequences of inactivity could be catastrophic. We have to run the risk of taking steps in the abyss of the New in completely unsuited situations: we have to reinvent aspects of the New with the sole purpose of preserving what is good in the old (…)».
Do you want to know what will happen in the coming months? Thinking about it, I don’t believe you do!
Foreseeing the future is not the stuff of mere mortals: if we found out what destiny had in store for use, how could we tackle the day-to-day challenges if we have been robbed of the right to pave our own way?
There are limits to our capacities (which are, when one considers it, mediocre) which we do well not to surpass unless ones aspires to godliness. And to be something a bit more, via a machine, arouses in me more fear than desire.
Having said that, one should state that living means awareness, and hence knowledge of realty, courage in making choices and, why not, some good understanding.
We do well to look around, aware of our own ignorance, trying to tie the maxims and principles to the examples, or that is to the facts and ones affections. Hence, one had best be prepared, keeping essential data and facts to mind.
This also goes for the small world of packaging, reason for which I invite you to proceed in reading this magazine.
In theJanuary-February issue of ItaliaImballaggio I underline the quotation from the 2017 Coop Report, according to which the year has drawn to a close a lot better than first announced: «Even though not perceptible in all areas and social states, a small recovery is underway. Employment is improving, inflation is slow and interest rates are at an all-time low. Household consumption is growing, even going beyond the slim growth in incomes. The trend in investments finally seems to be reinforced. And, despite the geopolitical uncertainties and the impending Italian elections, the prospects for 2018 also seem to be veiled with a cautious optimism».
In the hefty work (at least 300 pages) which among other things states «…the country’s future is still beset by persistent social rifts, aboveall between generations, as well as the down trend in demographics. With the current birthrates in fifty years time we will be 20 million less, and perhaps we should deal with the difficult theme of immigration in a different manner.
In this context, the progressive metamorphosis of the Italians becomes more accentuated. Disillusioned with religion and the ideologies of the past they are in search of a renewed system of values and new lifestyles. Health becomes a real obsession, aboveall at the meal table, people do more sports and for the first time one sees a widespread interest for the environment and the effects of climate change.
The Italians are also fascinated by the new digital technologies, the sole ones considered capable of creating value and simplifying everyday life. Artificial intelligence, self-driving cars and home domotics are now part of our future imaginary».
Signs to be grasped and interpreted and that are to be found in the Conai Prevention Call, where 400 thousand euros are offered to award the preventive actions of companies, but also digital innovations that enable the simplification and speeding up of purchasing.
One only has to think of Amazon’s Dash button, that connects up to your home wi.fi, that once pressed enables the automatic re-ordering of household products. A step in the direction of the internet of things. Thanks to these technological interfaces offline interactions can be made more involving, like for example the article “Stories in bottles”.
And then there are the important coming engagements for our sector in 2018. Limiting oneself to the first half of the year, one has the next edition of Cosmopack and Cosmoprof, the single segments having different opening days, Powderful Factory, and Cosmopack Awards, but also Anuga Foodtec, where there will be much process, but also a lot of packaging (and don’t forget that Koelnmesse in Italy by now also means Cibus Tec).
And to go on, Ipack-Ima, put to the test after the company changes that brought in Ucima and Fiera Milano: Hence the leading packaging machine builders will be exhibiting once again, but the plan is to also reinforce the visibility of materials and packaging producers, among other things with the Ipack-Mat area.
An Ipack-Ima that starts from the new great sector event: that Innovation Alliance, that has come into being with the objective of proposing operators with a broad offer of machines, technologies and services for the processing, meat packaging (Meat-Tech), logistics (Intralogistics), for the printing and converting Print4All), and plastics (Plast) industry.
Enough, it seems to me, to be able to say that all that is left for us is to exercise the art of the possible… but also cultivate a special type of courage, as Andrea Muni wrote in L'Espresso magazine: «The courage to open our eyes wide on that which - first and foremost of ourselves - we feel unhappy about and that hurts us the most. Perhaps only dedicating ourselves to this exercise… one day we too will be able to manage… to truly look the new and the epoch-making changes of which we are part in the eye».
Good luck to you all.
