Federplast: Petri Ven appointed Secretary General

Geert Scheys (left), Stéphane Dalimier (middle) and Petri Ven (right) will guarantee the continuity of the Federplast.be management.

The Board of Federplast.be, the Belgian Association of Manufacturers of Plastic and Rubber Products, has appointed Petri Ven as its new Secretary General. After 30 years in function, Secretary General Geert Scheys will pass the torch to his successor from 1 January 2014 onwards. Petri Ven is already active at Federplast.be as a senior advisor Building and Standardisation.

Federplast.be represents 257 companies of the Belgian plastics and rubber industry. Geert Scheys managed to develop Federplast.be into an umbrella organisation representing both the interests of the plastics and rubber companies, represented by essenscia, the Belgian chemical industry federation, and by Agoria, the Belgian technological industries federation. This collaboration between the 2 federations has created important synergies and more added value. The active involvement of Federplast.be and its related innovation structures within the New Industrial Policy of the Flanders Region and the Youth Education for Plastics Recycling project Plastimobile in the Walloon Region are clear examples of this successful cooperation.

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Over the past few years Federplast.be has changed its focus towards informing its member companies about issues related to its main markets: Packaging, Construction and Automotive. The association has initiated incentives to support the transition towards the use of renewable and recycled raw materials and caring about health and environment issues. In recent years the ecological footprint of plastics has been reduced significantly through innovation and increased recycling. Plastics have changed into a high quality, technologically advanced and competitive product solution. By exploiting its light weight and insulation properties plastics are ideally placed to help solving climate change and to manage in a sustainable way the use of scarce resources.

Petri Ven, 49 years, was educated as a building engineer and has more than 20 years of experience in the metal working and plastics processing industries. 4 years ago he joined essenscia, the Belgian federation of the chemical industry, which delegated him to Federplast.be as its senior advisor Building and Standardisation. With Petri Ven there will certainly be a new approach. He considers himself a strong analytical person, who likes to bring structure and who is also a team player.

“I look forward to managing Federplast.be. It is a great honour for me, but also a big challenge. A challenge, because companies today have optimize continuously their products, implying more need for consultation and cross-sectorial cooperation for which sector organisations such as Federplast.be are ideally placed. It is also an honour to take over from such an experienced person as Geert Scheys, who has been managing this organisation for 30 years. I accept my nomination knowing that I can rely, in the same way as my predecessor, on the support of all member companies”, says Petri Ven.

Stéphane Dalimier, President of Federplast.be, confirms: “With Petri Ven, Federplast.be has assigned the right person to the job aiming at safeguarding the competitiveness of the Belgian plastics and rubber industry in these economically challenging times. He will pursue this objective in close collaboration with our European federations EuPC (plastics) and ETRMA (rubber) and with essenscia and Agoria, our Belgian parent federations. Petri Ven becomes the Secretary General of Federplast.be from the 1st of January onwards and he will be assisted by his predecessor Geert Scheys until Mai 31st“.

More information: federplast.be

Federplast.be asbl, Bruxelles, Belgium

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