Day One at the Nordic ARM Conference in Tampere, Finland
Francis Ward Managing Director Jonathan Wurr reports from the Nordic ARM conference currently taking place in Tampere, Finland. "It is great to be back in the Nordic countries again. This is my third Nordic ARM meeting and the two previous ones have been fabulous. Each year gets bigger and better and this year there has been a record number of participants - over 90 people. This is good work by Ronny Ervik and the rest of the Nordic ARM committee. Unfortunately work commitments meant that I did not arrive until lunchtime on Day One so I missed some great looking presentations in the morning. However, the afternoon presentations provided a lot of useful information. The first presentation was from Rune Fink of the Norwegian test house, NET. This was useful for Francis Ward as we undertake a lot of UN performance testing for hazardous chemical containers. It was good to hear that rotomoulded grades of polyethylene can now be tested for chemical compatibility using accelerated tests, in the same way that blowmoulding grades have been for several years. A conversation with Rune at the coffee break gave me more useful information about reinstating old cancelled UN certificates, and he also told me that NET are capable of doing UN IBC vibration tests on 2,500 litre containers, if required. Nordic ARM Conference February 2014 I also enjoyed the presentation by Gregoire Herou of ICO who talked about the temperature and other performance specifications of rotomouldable materials such as polyamides and PVDF. PVDF can take continuous temperatures of 140 degrees C which may be useful for us in a new applicaion. He also outlined the method for rotomoulding liquid PA6 in which the polymerisation actually takes place in the mould. It is nice to think that we potentially have a small chemical reactor on our plant, (just don't tell our insurers!). My old singing partner Bill Spenceley was at the meeting to promote ARM 2014 in Chicago and he dressed up (yet again) in a Chicago Cubs outfit. I seem to rarely see Bill when he is NOT in some outfit or other. I am worried that I may be required to dress in Lincoln Green tights as Robin Hood to promote Nottingham 2015. In the evening we were bussed to a beautiful restaurant location at the other side of Tampere. Our meal included a main course of reindeer steak, and was followed by Ronny Ervik's famous quiz competition. Despite having a Canadian and Finn on our team for specialist questions, we were just beaten by defending champions Partnerplast who took the bottle of champagne again! There followed some significant networking in the bar till the small hours and one small, dedicated but hungry band of rotomoulders finding a kebab shop at 3am!