ECP4, The European Composites, Plastics and Polymer Processing Platform, announces the election of Board of Directors and launches the Strategic Research Agenda for the Plastic Industry.
ECP4, The European Composites, Plastics and Polymer Processing Platform, elected President and new Board of Directors during the Annual Meeting on the 28-29 of May 2015 at BBF (Bilbao Berrikuntza Faktoria – Bilbao Innovation Factory) of MONDRAGON CORPORATION in Bilbao (Spain).
The members had unanimously re-elected Clement de Meersman representing Flanders’Plastic Vision (a division of FISCH) as President, Liliana Chamudis-Varan representing AIMPLAS as Vice-President and Alexandre Dangis representing EuPC as Treasurer for the next 4 years. Other Board Members are Ton Pluijmert from ERFMI, Jan Diemert from Fraunhofer ICT, Hans Vercammen from Sirris, Jérome Sicard from PEP and Joseba Perez-Bilbatua from MONDRAGON CORPORATION.
This board is a reflection of strong innovation partners shaping the plastics and composites industry: R&D institutes, regional innovation clusters and EU level industrial organizations. ECP4 is growing steadily and now it represents 23 European plastic organizations and associations from 11 countries.
During the General Assembly ECP4 Members welcomed officially as new members: IK4-CIDETEC (Spain), Center of Polymer Systems - Research Unit of Thomas Bata University (Czech Republic), Centexbel (Belgium), IK4- TEKNIKER (Spain), Proplast (Italy) and MONDRAGON CORPORATION (Spain).
The Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for the Plastic Industry was officially launched at the main event of the ECP4 Annual Meeting. SRA is an important milestone in displaying future research and innovation challenges and will enhance the visibility of the Plastics Research Community in Europe. Moreover, it is a first step towards the definition of clear proposals where funding plastics topics can be developed and the inclusion of these plastics topics into the big societal challenges proposed by the EU Commission’s Research Agenda. SRA will be developed by ECP4 Members with the support of PlasticsEurope (Association of Plastics Manufacturers) and EuPC (European Plastics Converters) who actively collaborate to strengthen innovation in the European plastic sector.
A special thank you to MONDRAGON CORPORATION for a successful Annual Meeting and for the opportunity to visit some of their most innovative companies: FAGOR ARRASATE S. Coop., FPK S. Coop. and MAIER S. Coop.
