PR: New executive board and members for international trade body

The International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA) has announced changes to the executive board for 2022.

Dr Mark Deakes has been elected as the IHMA’s EU/EFTA regional board member, replacing Joanne Ogden, who has stood down after serving two terms. Mark was, until 2020, the Secretary General of the IHMA and, with a career spent in holography and the markets it serves, is well-placed to fill the vacancy.

Anton Goncharsky has been re-elected as the Eastern Europe regional board member.

While the Americas regional board member chair remains vacant following the retirement of Brad Hilbert, Rajan Thomas continues to oversee operations across Asia and Manoj Kochar resumes his responsibility for ASPA (Authentication Solution Providers’ Association) in India. Prof SeungHyun Lee (South Korea and Hologram Forum), Alessio Pastorelli and Corinne Murcia Giudicelli remain board members.

The IHMA has also announced two new members - Canadian-based Nanotech Security Corporation (now part of the Meta Materials Group) and Hologramas de Mexico. With the majority of IHMA members located in Europe and India, the addition of two companies from the Americas provides welcome balance.

Under chairman Dr Paul Dunn, the Board will continue to oversee the IHMA’s work to advance holography and its ongoing mission to expand the scope of current operations, embracing the widest range of commercial holographic activity.

This includes securing new members involved in innovative application areas and working to promote increasing integration of holography with other technologies to offer added value integrated solutions.

This year, the indications are that brand protection, track and trace and other anti-counterfeiting technologies in packaging will increase as global economies continue to wrestle with the impacts of pandemic. The packaging industry is also seeing benefits from the use of anti-counterfeiting solutions, particularly as fears over shortages of medicines, pharmaceuticals and vaccines in many parts of the world drive demand for counterfeit and illicit products.

Dr Paul Dunn said: “Technical and application innovation continues to push the boundaries of what holography can achieve, reflecting the fact that the technology plays an important role across many industrial and commercial sectors. The IHMA continues to move forward and work with members and organisations to ensure that it will remains a strong advocate, industry voice and effective resource for the industry in the future.”

The IHMA (www.ihma.org) is made up of over 80 of the world's leading hologram companies. Members include the leading producers and converters of holograms for banknote security, anti-counterfeiting, brand protection, packaging, graphics and other commercial applications around the world, and actively cooperate to maintain the highest professional, security and quality standards.