ARMA Workshop, Auckland, New Zealand
Jonathan Wurr, MD of Francis Ward, concludes his reports from this year's ARMA conference with a final instalment from the one day workshop in New Zealand. "After our late night arrival in Auckland our speakers 'band of brothers' had a day to look around the Auckland area. We had a great trip to Galloway Plastic who were making water tanks and other products, many of them rotomoulded boats. We had the chance to watch a 20,000 litre tank being demoulded which was a new experience for me. The method for producing camouflage effect boats was really interesting. Many thanks to Garth and Dave at Galloway for letting us have a look around. We had a few hours to kill so we had the chance to catch the ferry to Waiheke Island and had a lunch and a wine-tasting experience. Unfortunately Auckland had decided to welcome us with good old-fashioned British weather so we could not really look around much. Back in Auckland we got a chance to look around an Americas Cup yachting exhibit in the harbour. We were hosted at University of Auckland facilities for the day and we had some great speakers. Many of us had presented at Sydney so there weren't too many new presentations for me, but I loved the slow-motion videos of the falling dart tests shown by Graeme Finch of the Faculty of Engineering at the University. There is a strong commitment to research and polymer testing in this part of the world. Integrating polymer and wool (yes, really) seemed like a typically New Zealand experiment, but it was serious exploration of the flame retardant properties of wool. Rory Jones presented on his home turf on internal water cooling. Time for me to decide on this technology! Eric Maziers of Total presented on polymers and their forward strategy. Total seem completely committed to developing evolutions of polymers and I learned that they also have a bondable PE that we may consider. Marco from Serralunga did his presentation again and I continue to be excited by his use of the technology to produce beautiful objects. Some of the things he tries in his machines are completely wacky - just to see what the result looks like. I was pleased to find another UN-approved container rotomoulder called Devan Plastics. They make UN-approved 200-litre drums for the chemical industry in New Zealand. We exchanged notes and stories and we may be able to do some work together in the future. Congratulations to Leisa and Michelle of ARMA for a fabulous double-conference. It is an intense process for them but so worth all their efforts. Seeing it from the speaker angle, I saw how much they do to deliver these conferences effectively. Many thanks to them for the chance to come Down Under and learn about rotomoulding challenges and techniques in this part of the world."