The Hague, the Netherlands -- At its 2011 conference held in the Hague, 14-16 Nov, PDA-Europe, the Polyurea Development Association of Europe, elected Romuald Bartczak, general manager of Belgian polyurea systems developer FlexGuard, as its 2012 president.
Bartczak took over the reins of the association from Stephan Rindfleisch of equipment maker Graco.
At the meeting, the PDA-Europe board also reiterated its intention to remain firmly focussed on polyurea materials, and not change its area of interest. This is in response to a recent move in which the US PDA has added hybrid and polyurethane coatings to its coverage and become "PDA-The Association for high performance elastomeric technologies."
As Marc Broekaert of Huntsman, chair of the PDA Europe membership committee, noted, "PDA Europe is the leading organisation representing the interests of the European polyurea market." And, he added, "The way things are going, we might become a global one who knows…"
Broekaert stressed that the aims of PDA Europe are to promote market awareness, understanding and acceptance of polyurea technology through developing educational programmes, product standards, application guidelines, safety and environmental recommendations.
Standards differ from the US and Europe, Broekaert noted, and PDA-Europe tries to keep in touch with standards bodies and get polyurea recognised in these. As the meeting heard, this is a central task, and a challenging one, as changing standards, directives and norms to include newer, non-traditional materials is a time consuming and difficult task.
PIC: Bartczak (r) takes over PDA-Europe presidency from RindFleisch (r) .
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