During this year's "Fakuma" industry fair (www.fakuma-messe.de), held from 16-20 October in Friedrichshafen / Germany (see Plasteurope.com of 26.10.2012), the German Engineering Federation VDMA (Frankfurt; www.vdma.org) launched its "Blue Competence" theme, part of its sustainability drive. “As plant and machinery manufacturers, we have a responsibility to enable converters to use energy and raw materials efficiently, creating the technological basis for sustainable finished products,” said VDMA chairman Ulrich Reifenhäuser. Almost all of VDMA’s 40 member companies have already joined the scheme.

The initiative comes in response to new European legislation and customer demands to make machinery energy consumption levels more transparent and comparable. The new "Euromap 60" guidelines on machine related energy measurement for injection moulding machines, due to be released at the end of this year, will afford more general guidelines for evaluation, VDMA said. A 2011 study by the European association of plastics and rubber machinery manufacturers Euromap (Frankfurt / Germany; www.euromap.org) said that a 20% reduction on energy consumption is achievable – see Plasteurope.com of 03.10.2011.