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Effi ciency and sustainability will be key themes for this year’s K show, with many innovations presented under the VDMA German machinery association’s Blue Competence banner. Chris Smith fi nds out more


Sustainability drives innovation


There’s no doubt that energy consumption is high on the agenda for any plastics processor today. And that is not only for cost reasons – while improving energy effi cien-


cy certainly benefi ts the bottom line it also reduces CO2 emissions and many customers are now looking to their suppliers for hard evidence to support their sustainabil- ity and environmental claims. Plastics machinery makers will play a key role in meeting these demands for more sustainable manufac- turing and that will be demonstrated at K under the VDMA’s Blue Competence banner. “As plant and machinery manufacturers, we have a responsibility to enable converters to use energy and raw materials effi ciently, creating the technological basis for sustai- nable fi nished products,” says Ulrich Reifenhäuser, chairman of the VDMA’s Plastics and Rubber Machinery Association and CEO of Troisdorf, Germany-based extrusion machinery maker Reifenhäuser. Plastics machinery makers have hardly ignored the


issue of energy effi ciency over the past few years. However, the launch and wide support from the industry for the Blue Competence initiative – more than 50 plastics and rubber machinery companies are now signed up to it - reaffi rms that commitment, according


www.injectionworld.com September 2013 | INJECTION WORLD 43


to Thorsten Kühmann, managing director of the plastics and rubber machinery division of VDMA. “The industry‘s production effi ciency has doubled in


the last 20 years, while at the same time machine-rela- ted energy consumption has fallen by one third,” says Kühmann. “As a Euromap study shows, the energy effi ciency forecasts are also indicative of the way ahead: there is the potential for a further 20% saving in machine-related energy consumption by the year 2020.” But what does Blue Competence mean in practice


for plastics machinery makers? In this article we take a look at what some of the key Blue Competence partners want to achieve and fi nd out how they are going about it.


Evidence of


more effi cient and sustainable plastics


processing will be on display at K2013, with


many examples promoted under the


VDMA’s Blue Competence banner


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