Jacques van Rijckevorsel, Member of the Executive Committee of Solvay SA, is the new PlasticsEurope President. Mr. van Rijckevorsel was elected at the PlasticsEurope General Assembly in Ferrara, Italy, and replaces John Taylor as the head of the association. Günter Hilken (Bayer MaterialScience), Martin Pugh (Ineos Nova) and Anton de Vries (LyondellBasell) were elected Vice-Presidents.In his first address, Jacques van Rijckevorsel said that it was a very exciting time to take up this position. He added that society faces many critical challenges such as climate change and the looming energy crisis. As a highly resource-efficient material, plastics have a critical role to play in tackling these problems. Van Rijckevorsel also expressed his eagerness to work with all stakeholders to demonstrate that the plastics industry is committed to sustainability. In addition, he thanked his predecessor John Taylor for his huge contribution to the development of PlasticsEurope from a federation into the first truly pan-European industry association.
PlasticsEurope is one of the leading European trade associations with centres in Brussels, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Milan and Paris. It is networking with European and national plastics associations and has more than 100 member companies, producing over 90% of all polymers across the EU27 member states plus Norway, Switzerland, Croatia and Turkey.
The European plastics industry makes a significant contribution to the welfare in Europe by enabling innovation, creating quality of life to citizens and facilitating resource efficiency and climate protection. More than 1.6 million people are working in about 50.000 companies (mainly small and medium sized companies in the converting sector) to create a turnover in excess of 280 billion ? per year.
