What a highlight. Could the founders have imagined this 50 years ago when they founded EPDA? Every year, 150 distributors and manufacturers of semi-finished durable plastics come together. Especially for this anniversary, Marieke Pietersma wrote a book detailing the history of the EPDA titled From a Club to an Association. Before the conference, this was handed out, providing our long-term members with much excitement.
With a young board, you can also expect new developments. One of these was the Optional Welcome Dinner following the Welcome Reception. There was a lot of enthusiasm for this, as more than 70 people had signed up for it. We had dinner in the beautifully located Sea Containers restaurant on the Themes.
Another new thing introduced by the board was our professional host Clare Forestier. She was loved by many of us, and we are happy to have her with us again next year. She did a good job, especially as she is not from our industry. She also did have an exceptional opening speaker to introduce Joost Rigter.
After the ‘darkness’ experience, Clare introduced eight new members! We are so proud that six distributors and two manufacturers decided to join our association.
Dimitri Koreanis, our industry speaker from PI-web, showed us impressive numbers and graphs overseeing our industry. Even though we all read the news items on PI-web, it is still impressive to see the developments of the past year summarised in his presentation. Bursting with information about the global plastic industry, blowing us all away.
Another new element this year is the afternoon session Shape your own programme. Members choose their own sessions: Reshaping Plastics from circular to net-zero, Biopolymer PHA: the difference between bio compostable and biodegradable and Thermoplastic Pipelines in the battery industry.
After a day of education and inspiration, we all went to St Paul’s Cathedral for the gala dinner. Prior to the dinner, we listened to a choir and organ recital.
On Friday morning we traditionally had our AGM. Parallel to this meeting we launched our Next Gen Network with two mentoring sessions by honorary members Duncan Smith and Bryan Heath. Please click here if you want to know more about our Next-Gen Network.
After our President Cintia Rebelo closed the official part of the conference, we went on a red open-top bus for a London tour ending up in the London Eye. Our time in London was concluded with a dinner in the skyscraper Gherkin. Amazing view!
Anniversary Video London
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