IFCA seminar – Packaging strategies for future: Challenges & opportunities, plastic waste management & EPR’ took place on 22 October 2019 at Bombay Exhibition Center Mumbai, India. Brilliant Polymers was the platinum sponsor for the IFCA seminar. The seminar started with the felicitation of the event sponsors followed by a session with Suresh Gupta, president, IFCA, who gave insights on the packaging industry. Next, keynote speaker CK Ranganathan, founder of CMD Cavinkare, spoke about EPR, the need to invest in R&D, the process innovation and focus on quality to make a product better.
Brilliant Polymers sponsored a talk on the latest trends in plastic waste management by Kelvin Davies, Australasian projects manager at Nextek, UK. Davies spoke on the need for collecting and sorting of the plastic waste, and recovering of the same. Davies also showed the technology of segregation of plastic waste through videos. He also gave a brief on film recycling development plant in Pune and how Nextek will design and build a multi-function, state-of-the-art recycling plant, specific to the needs of Pune.
There were also interesting sessions held at the seminar. Pravin Nadgoundi, manager – quality and regulatory, Brilliant Polymers spoke on food safety in terms of lamination adhesive perspective and how packaging provides required protection to food contents and how it is critical to food safety. He also emphasized that Brilliant adhesives are compliant with all statutory norms with respect to packaging which indirectly provides protection to food contents.
Sunil Kumar from Henkel spoke on adhesives and coatings as enablers of circular economy; Ajith Kumar from Starbucks spoke on sustainability at Starbucks; Rahul Poddar spoke on EPR – plastic waste management; Jatin Takkar from Siegwerk spoke on safety and regulatory in inks; and Meenakshi Sapru from HPPL spoke on new trends in packaging through digital printing.
The seminar served as a great platform for attendees to meet flexible packaging converters, raw material suppliers, inks and adhesive manufacturers and film suppliers. It also gave them an opportunity to connect with their customers and gain insights about current market trends and recent developments.