Clement de Meersman, a representative of Flanders’ PlasticVision (Kortrijk / Belgium; www.plasticvision.be), was unanimously re-elected as president of the European Composites, Plastics and Polymer Processing Platform (ECP4, Brussels / Belgium; www.ecp4.eu) during the group’s recent annual meeting, held on 28 and 29 May in Bilbao / Spain. The Technological Institute of Plastic’s (Aimplas, Valencia / Spain; www.aimplas.es) Liliana Chamudis-Varan was confirmed as vice president and European Plastics Converters' (EuPC, Brussels / Belgium; www.plasticsconverters.eu) managing director Alexandre Dangis as treasurer.

Other board members of the association, which represents 23 European plastic organisations and groups from 11 different countries, include the European Resilient Flooring Manufacturers’ Institute’s (ERFMI, Brussels / Belgium; www.erfmi.com) Ton Pluijmert, Fraunhofer ICT’s (Pfinztal / Germany; www.ict.fraunhofer.de) Jan Dimert, Sirris’ (Brussels; www.sirris.be) Hans Vercammen, the Centre Technique de la Plasturgie et des Composites’ (PEP, Bellignat / France; www.poleplasturgie.net) Jérome Sicard as well as Mondragon Corporation’s (Mondragón / Spain; www.mondragon-corporation.com) Joseba Perez-Bibatua.

During the meeting, ECP4 also launched its “Strategic Research Agenda” (SRA) for the European plastics industry. Aside from displaying future research and innovation challenges, the agenda will also enhance the visibility of Europe’s plastics research community and define clear proposals for funding and how these topics can be included in the EU Commission’s research agenda. SRA will be supported by EuPC and PlasticsEurope (Brussels / Belgium; www.plasticseurope.org).

At the Bilbao meeting, ECP4 also welcomed six new members. In addition to host Mondragon Corporation, they include IK4-Cidetec (San Sebastián / Spain; www.cidetec.es/en), the Center of Polymer Systems at Thomas Bata University (Zlín / Czech Republic; http://cps.utb.cz/eng), Centexbel (Gent / Belgium; www.centexbel.be), IK4-Tekniker (Eibar / Spain; www.tekniker.es) and Proplast Italy (Rivalta Scrivia / Italy; www.proplast.it).

The main goal of the ECP4 platform is to identify opportunities for collaborative research and development. Its objectives include the provision of networking and collaboration opportunities across institutions, to facilitate access to EU research programmes and to communicate new technologies and their relevance to plastics converters and the composites industry.