Dave Raine, chairman of PMMDA, details the main take-home messages from the Irish Polymer Group annual conference.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Irish Polymer Group annual conference in Athlone. This meeting, having run for something like 30 years, under various names and guises, continues to be both a well-attended and well-run event, and this year saw record numbers posted, which is a positive and pleasing sign.
There were several papers and presentations delivered, and a debate in the afternoon produced some thought-provoking comments from both the panel and also the audience, and the opening presentation from Declan O’Rourke on start-up challenges and what new businesses may encounter in the short to medium-term in Ireland was a particularly inspiring piece. However, from my point of view, three key messages stood out from the whole day.
The first was a very informative paper by Donough McGrath of JJVC, in which he outlined a research-based approach to mathematically determining acceptable levels of recyclate that can be introduced at source to virgin feedstock in medical device packaging. Whilst this sounds very specific and targeted to a focussed area of plastics manufacturing, Donough outlined how this model could be used by any processor to determine the optimum levels of re-introduction of regrind into the process, and whilst this clearly has its roots in the avoidance of packaging taxation, its implications reach far beyond this, and seek to make processors more competitive and efficient.
Secondly, there were several presentations from various bodies such as Technical University Shannon, all based around support networks and clusters. The innovative nature of these products and offerings should be seen as a real positive for the industry and expanded upon. In almost all cases, messages and papers from the conference, including both those delivered by Declan & Donough had a singular message – teams and support are essential in every aspect of business, and building the best team outweighs (in most cases) building an impressive facility.
Finally, one aspect of the conference was both worrying and possibly, missed by many. TUS has reported for the first time in many years that its number of graduate intakes is down. Ireland has been a hotbed of the plastics industry in Europe, and the academic centres have enjoyed a consistent and high-quality stream of individuals wanting to work in the polymer industry, but clearly, something has changed. Whilst I leave it up to the reader to speculate what this or these causes may be, my personal feeling is we are seeing the beginnings of a change in the image of this industry having a visible and damaging effect, and this needs to be addressed.
