New President aims for a level playing field for the Plastics Industry

The newly elected President of the British Plastics Federation Paul Jukes, Managing Director of Arkema Ltd, has made the following statement on the key themes he intends to pursue during his period of office.

“I would firstly like to pay tribute to my predecessor Calum Forsyth who in the midst of his Presidency has had to cope with the worst recession in living memory.” Calum formed and led the BPF Recession Action Group and is chairing the ‘Plastics Challenge 2020’ which he spoke about at today’s AGM.

Getting through the Recession

“I fully intend to continue the good work of the BPF’s Recession Action Group, set up by Calum, as I have said, to guide our lobbying of Government and the Bank of England.

Very shortly we will conduct another survey of BPF members to find out their assessment of business conditions and the prospects ahead.  The first survey in January showed 9,300 job losses were likely.  We shall share the results with our membership and Government and it will guide the proposals the BPF makes.  We soon expect to meet a BERR Minister Ian Pearson MP to discuss the plight of the hard hit Construction, Automotive and Recycling Sectors in our industry.

We are urging our members to explore Export opportunities, with the value of sterling giving us a major advantage.

At this very moment BPF staff are manning the UK Pavilion at the Chinaplas Exhibition in Guangzhou. Also this month we have a similar presence at the Plastpol exhibition in Poland.  In March next year for the first time the BPF will take British companies to a plastics exhibition in Vietnam.

Our powerful new BPF website contains an Industry Directory and Exporters Toolbox.  The website receives 1.5 million visitors a year, 25% of them non-UK.”

Preparing for the Upturn

“Sometime there will be an upturn and we have to try and ensure the Plastics Industry is well placed to take advantage of it.

I do urge plastics companies to retain and train their core staff. There’s help available from Cogent our Sector Council and the National Skills Academy for the process industries (NSAPI). The BPF strongly supports the Gold Standard, an industry skills continuous professional development scheme for world class performance in key job roles.

We must continue to encourage and recognise Innovation for which our industry has always been renowned. The BPF and the Materials Knowledge Transfer Network’s Polymer Sector provide the encouragement for companies and academia to innovate together.  Awards scheme such as the prestigious Horners’ Award for innovation in plastics recognise and publicise achievements in pushing forward plastics technology.”

Ensuring a level playing field for plastics

“I want to ensure the UK Plastics Industry has a level playing field on which to compete with other materials and also overseas.  I am concerned that on energy, taxation and waste management we do not have this level playing field.  This is not helped by unfairly negative and often purely sensationalist media coverage of Plastics. I am determined that the BPF should try to rectify this.

I also want to see a level playing field for the specification of plastic products for the London Olympics 2012, and in this context I am delighted that we have received a letter from the Economics and Business Minister Ian Pearson MP in which he writes that he is pleased that plastics including PVC will be used in the Olympic Park.

For almost ten years our industry has been hit hard by having to pay the full amount of the unpopular and unfair Climate Change Levy Energy Tax, whereas other materials have an 80% discount, and much of Europe has no industrial energy tax at all.

At last help for most but not all companies is in sight with a BPF Climate Change Agreement for electricity use only for most of the processes in our industry.  We are awaiting Parliamentary approval but need to register now companies that wish to join the scheme.  Fifty have already registered and a further fifty are in the pipeline.

On taxation I have to say we will fight the Government’s proposed National Insurance Contributions (NICS) increase in April 2011. This will hit employees and employers hard just as the recovery may be taking place.

Energy costs for our industry are frequently way above those for mainland Europe, a reflection of the fact the UK is a net importer of energy, with ageing nuclear capacity,  little gas storage and very little Energy from Waste capacity.  Soon we will be meeting the Energy Minister Mike O’Brien MP to discuss how we avoid black outs by 2014 and how we can quickly develop more Energy from Waste combustion capacity to use unrecyclable waste to generate local heat and power.

Finally, how can we achieve a level playing field in the media? We are grateful to Estate Agents, Bankers and now even MPs in terms of public opinion but I would like to see our “promotion” up the popularity league tables by default consolidated and improved on by a better public understanding of the values we try to bring.

The Media’s focus on visible but minor issues such as plastic bags and litter colours the public’s impression of all plastics and the huge environmental benefits they bring in, for example:

·    lightweighting cars, aircraft and packaging
·    insulating homes to prevent energy loss (EPS insulation, PVC U Windows)
·    replacing 1,000 miles of cracked Victorian water mains here in London to stop 30% leakage.

On 7th July we shall launch “The Plastics 2020 Challenge – Reduce, Re-use, Recycle, and Recover”.

Calum Forsyth, our out-going President, gave details at our AGM today.

Our objective is basically threefold:

·    to open a dialogue with all stakeholders including the public on the 4 Rs on how to avoid used plastics being landfilled or littered
·    to increase plastics recycling and Energy from Waste
·    to achieve a more positive understanding of the benefits of plastics

We have a resilient innovative British Plastics Industry experiencing tough times.  I want the BPF to make the road out of recession more level and even for all our companies.”

ENDS

For further information on this press release, please contact Anthony Roberts, British Plastics Federation, 6 Bath Place, Rivington Street, London, EC2A 3JE, tel 020 7457 5043, fax 020 7457 5045, email: [email protected]

Notes for editors:

1)     British Plastics Federation (BPF) is the UK trade association for the plastics industry – representing the whole supply chain including polymer producers, distributors, additives suppliers, machinery manufacturers, processors and recyclers.