◎ Notice of FTA Competition
The FTA(Flexographic Technical Association of the U.S.) will hold the “FTA2012 Annual Forum & INFO FLEXO Exhibition” in Taxas, USA during March 18-21,2012. This event features a competition for “Excellence in Flexography Awards”, which is designed to evaluate the quality of the flexographic printing, and we, FTAJ mambers are also sought to participate there. Although participation in the competition can be done independently by individual companies, FTAJ offers special support(to its members) by initially collecting its members' works at the FTAJ Office to check whether they meet the application requirements, and then submitting them together to the FTA. Competition brochures, application forms, and technical date sheet can be downloaded from the URL below:

http://www.flexography.org/05HonorsAwards/exflex.html

Please refer to the application information below regarding deadlines and application requirements. We encourage our members to take advantage of this opportunity to participate in this competition.

◎ The 97th Technical Study Group
The 97th Technical Study Group was held on October 18, 2011. We had over 80 participants, and topics covered were the latest prepress technology and reports of the“ IGAS2011” event held at the Tokyo Big Sight. For more details, please visit the“ Technical Study Group” page.

◎ Notice of the 10th Anniversary AFTA Conference
AFTA(Asian Flexographic Technical Association), who offered their prayers for the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake, held a conference in Thailand to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the establishment of AFTA.

AFTA Chairman, Paul Callahan, sent us a formal invitation to welcome FTAJ members to participate in this conference. In addition, he welcomed participation in the contest(Packaging Excellence 2011 Awards), which will be held concurrently with the conference. Althouh Japanese-language support is not provided at the conference, those who are interested in the contest or conference shoud refer to the AFTA website(http://www.afta.com.sg).

◎ Words of encouragement received from Overseas FTA
We woud like to thank Mr. Gong, President of CFTA, as well as Mr. Callaghan, Chairman of AFTA, for their kind words of sympathy after our country was hit by the devastating earthquake.

◎ Notice about our new English website
For the purpose of further enhancing our website, we have created a new English-language website. To view this site, please click on the “to English” link on the left-hand menu.

❉ Launch of Sale of Publications of Flexographic Technical Association of Japan
The FTAJ is pleased to announce that the newsletter back-issues and textbooks from the "Flexo Japan 2008" Forum is available for sale. For ordering or for more information, please click on the "Buy Publications" link on the left-hand menu.