L&C magazine with Cetie - Questions and answers

By Nicholas Harris
The 01/12/2015

Cetie is a unique platform providing resource for the packaging industry



Cetie is a unique platform that pools expertise in bottling and publishes technical reference documents and specifications, based on this expertise, intended to become European and international standards. By bringing together the expertise from more than 80 member companies and organisations, Cetie offers an unmatched potential of networked know-how.
 

Since 2013, Cetie’s publications have been available for download free of charge to non-members,


reflecting the general trend in the economic model of access to information, and the principle that the data on who is looking for what information has an inherent value that “remunerates” the very access to that information. While access to Cetie’s publications remains strictly free of charge, users are required to open a free account so that Cetie knows who is interested in its reference documents and which documents they download. The frequency at which the different documents are downloaded is also a useful indicator that the working groups can use to prioritise their revisions.
 
At the same time, since the documents have been made available free of charge, the number of requests has increased significantly. This probably has less to do with money, given the low prices that were charged for the documents, than with the time it takes to place an order and wait for the document to arrive by post. By making the documents available for free and switching to electronic formats only, Cetie has also reduced the administrative resources required. It is a win-win change for Cetie and the players in the bottling industry, who now have easy access to this source of useful technical information.
 

This more direct and easier access to the documents has also put Cetie on the digital and connected map,


allowing it to acquire the corresponding worldwide dimension. Bottling is an industry that appears to be present in just about every country in the world. The statistics of visits to the Cetie website show that users from more than 100 countries on every continent have visited the site this year. The length of the visits and the number of pages visited also reveal the interest of an extended readership in the site’s content. A fact borne out by the number of requests to open accounts and download documents.
 
The heightened visibility of Cetie’s activity that all this generates also provides input for the “answers to technical questions” function that professionals on the lookout for information can find on the site’s “Contacts” page. We receive questions from all over the world, and we always do our best to give a rapid and relevant answer. Here again, this is a free service, but one that enables us to collect feedback on the needs of manufacturers’ in the sector for technical reference documents, and their accessibility. It also requires us to check that the information in our possession reflects the state of the art in the various subjects, a quality that is clearly very important in order to support Cetie’s status as a reliable source. It also helps to maintain the network of experts, which constitutes the real wealth of our organisation and is called on whenever necessary to check that our answers are accurate.
 
It comes as no surprise that the most frequently asked questions are about finding standards and reference documents in areas that are not covered by the Cetie collection. This category also includes the EN and/or ISO standards derived from Cetie documents, which are subsequently withdrawn from the collection of available publications. Instinctively turning to Cetie for the bottling specifications in EN and ISO standards strengthens our standing as a preferred source of information in the sector.
 
In another vein, there are the cottage structures with projects to develop traditional products, which need to understand the regulatory and normative requirements applying to bottling, or start-ups with ideas for new forms of packaging or closure systems that need to see where they stand relative to the existing offers.
 
People also turn to us to shine a light on apparently contradictory specifications. The contradiction between the specifications given by bottle suppliers and those of cap suppliers is a classic example that was very the reason why Cetie was set up in the first place. These requests often come from distant countries, illustrating why it is useful for Cetie to advocate the benefits of standardisation and technical reference systems based on consensus all over the world.
 

Cetie must find its place in an increasingly connected world, where all sorts of information can be accessed in a mouse click or two.


Free access to reliable technical information, documentation and simple advice is clearly one of the driving forces behind the establishment of Cetie as a worldwide benchmark. But one day, the time will come when the resources necessary to maintain our capacity to respond will require us to question the organisation’s working model and to charge fees to access some of the information with added value. The answer to this question must be defined together with our members, but it is a question we have to ask if Cetie is to keep pace with events.
 
By N. Harris Cetie General Secretary
Published in Liquides & Conditionnement N°380 (December 2015)
PDF (FR) :
- Liquides & Conditionnement N°380 (FR)
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