Christian Duyckaerts has been inaugurated as the new president of Fespa. He becomes the 17th president of the global federation of associations for the wide-format printing community, and will be supported during his two-year tenure by vice-president Christophe Aussenac.
Duyckaerts, who joined the Board of Fespa in 2002, represents the Belgian printing trade association Febelgra, where he presides over the screen and digital workgroup. He is also founder and managing director of Retail Communicators. He was previously CEO and co-owner of two of the largest POS and outdoor print production companies in Belgium - Print&Display and GSI Printing.
In his inaugural speech, Duyckaerts said: “Our challenge is to prepare Fespa for 2020 and beyond, to exploit the area of digital transformation where our industry is facing many opportunities, not just with Web-to-print but also with omni-channel solutions and many areas of customisation.
“We will help our global community to adapt to these new trends and evolutions with conferences and summits to share best practice, knowledge, information and friendship, along with many other initiatives. Fespa will continue to build bridges between the printing industry and the end users of print and graphics, invest in the industry and focus on areas such as textile print, packaging, interior design, retail and many more. We will continuously look for synergies in favour of our members and work for a bright future for print.”
The Fespa board is now:
- Christian Duyckaerts - president (Belgium)
- Christophe Aussenac - vice president (France)
- Enrico Steijn - treasurer (Netherlands)
- Lascelle Barrow - (UK)
- Gyorgy Kovacs - (Hungary)
- Anders Nilsson - (Sweden)
- Olaf Skilbred - (Norway)
- Thomas Struckmeier - (Germany)