FESPA's 50th anniversary will see member associations from outside Europe eligible to vote at its General Assembly, a move that the organisation's head calls a reflection of modern globalisation.

Member associations from Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Nepal, the Philippines and Thailand will now be part of the decision-making process of how FESPA's financial reserves are used, with Sri Lanka to join next year.

Nigel Steffens, FESPA's chief executive, highlights the distance between the group's origins and the present day. "FESPA was founded half a century ago to promote knowledge-sharing and best practice among screen printers in a small cluster of European countries," he explains. "This was at a time before digital printing had even entered the marketplace, and when the degree of globalisation which we know today was still unimaginable.

"FESPA now has 27 European member associations and a further ten across the world, engaging with a combined global community of over 200,000 print service providers. The strengthened constitutional position of our global member associations is an important part of our growth and development plan," Steffens concludes