The Northern Lights!

BPF’s Philip Law and Stephen Hunt recently played host to an emerging association from Norway when Vidar Nyhammer, the General Manager of the Norwegian Circular Materials and Technology Cluster (NCMT), visited the BPF’s offices.

Vidar explained that traditionally in Norway there had been no over-arching plastics industry organisation and that only individual sectors or regions were represented with activities organised on a voluntary basis with no staff resource.

His cluster, which is growing with 75 member firms and 27 associated partners, is the closest Norway has to a BPF style organisation. Based in Sandane, it employs a professional staff and is a constituent part of the wider Federation of Norwegian Industries which goes back to 1889 and embraces 3000 member companies.

For a list of NCMT’s member firms go to: https://ncmt.no/medlemmer

He said the major function of the organisation was to develop a circular economy for plastics. The starting point has been waste generated by the companies themselves. He is finding that his widely distributed companies are not generating a critical mass of factory waste in any one location so the logistics of waste collection has become a priority. Consequently, waste management companies ate members of the organisation.

The production of plastics materials in Norway is just over 500KTS and that of semi-finished and finished plastics products is about 250KTS.

A much higher proportion of the market in Norway is in thermoset materials, particularly for offshore/marine applications and Vidar is exploring the available recycling technologies. He was interested in the BPF’s early work on the recovery of energy from thermosets at Nottingham University and in the abrasion of thermoset materials into sand-blasting media.They are nembers of the European Composites Industry Association.

He finds it difficult to engage with the Norwegian government on the potential UN Global Treaty on plastics and finds this worrying as Norway iis regarded by the UN as a ‘High Ambition Country.’ NCMT has published a position statement on this.

Because of the growing size of NCMT and Norway’s position outside of the EU we judge it a good move to develop the relationship. He had a high interest in our events programme and has an annual conference.

For more information: https://ncmt.no/om-ncmt