Stéphane Content, (European Council for Plasticizers and Intermediates) ECPI’s Manager after the meeting said that “long overdue occasion to sit down with such a large and diverse group of companies. Seeing their willingness to collaborate is very satisfied. This is a great starting point to come up with ideas to improve the perception of PVC industry and its products. A united industry will always be a stronger.
During the workshop, participants also agreed on the need to engage and educate the wider community of stakeholders on the benefits of all plasticizers, the need for regulatory predictability and the socioeconomic contribution of the industry. On the basis of agreed objectives, the participants on the major components and have created a road map “Road Map” for the industry plasticizers. As a next step, there will be a meeting in 2016 focused on discussing how to have the right platform to represent producers in Europe and the role ECPI should play.
A few days later, i.e. 12 -13 October 2015 in the vicinity of Paris took place the third edition of the annual Media Field Trip, organized by the ECPI. The media trip, supported by VinylPlus, allowed seven journalists from European specialized press the occasion to get first-hand knowledge of PVC through visits to three factories.
The first factory visited during media tour was CIFRA. CIFRA is in fact a factory producing up to 65% of products from post-industrial and post-consumer flexible PVC scrap. The latter is sorted depending on its properties reprocessed through an innovative recycling process and transformed into high quality recycled PVC films which can be reused, for example, in the automotive industry. Another factory in media trip was the Griffin, which is a major international producer of high-quality flexible PVC covered with a foil for the automotive, furniture and others. The third and last factory, which was visited by representatives of the media was Chaize Environnement, which developed its own innovative techniques for recycling PVC containing textile fibers with new compounds that can be used as primary material for the production of new elements of PVC.
Representatives of the media tour was an excellent opportunity for journalists to see some good examples of innovation on PVC and learn about the benefits of the restoration of everyday life PVC products.