Watify Smart Plastics !

The oportunities and challenges of "Smart Plastics" : j'intervenais ce matin à un événement organisé par Watify et l'Agence économique sur la plasturgie et ses enjeux. Une rencontre pour faciliter la coopération inter-régionale, et transfrontalière.

"Auvergne Rhône Alpes Region:

- is situated in the heart of the world's leading economic zone, the world's leading trading power, the European Union, accounts for sixteen point five percent of the total world imports and exports and provides access to over five hundred and eleven million consumers.

- is innovative: France’s number one industrial region with five hundred thousand employees with world leaders ,

- is home to a wealth of research potential with international laboratories such as CEA-LETI (Center for Atomic Energy and Electronic Laboratory and Information Technology), CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research), ESRF (European Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory), IARC (International Center for Research on Cancer), INRA (National Institute for Agronomic Research).

- is outward-looking: More than seven hundred companies in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes have nearly three thousand subsidiaries, joint ventures, commercial offices abroad.

Last but not least, Auvergne Rhone Alpes is the leading region in France in the plastics sector with 825 companies and more than 26 thousand employees, either 21% of France.

We want  to attract new businesses to our territory - dynamic, innovative companies, wich eco effective business pratices and sustainable products, those will be the companies that will create the tomorrow’s jobs.

The Region is part of the 4 motors for Europe. With this dynamic and the support of our economic agency Auvergne Rhone alpes entreprises, we pilot the working group “4 motors 4 industry of the futur” with the aim to foster insights, knowledge and expertise between the 4 european regions, the clusters, and the companies.

WATIFY is an european awareness-raising initiative that stimulates the modernization of European industry.

It’s why we collaborate with Greenomed INTERREG Mediteranean project, a European project with our regional competitiveness cluster Plastipolis, to organize this event on smart plastics.

The objective of the matchmaking smart plastics event is to facilitate inter-regional / cross-border cooperation between regional public and private sector actors in the development of joint initiatives /partnerships or joint demonstration projects in smart plastics – matching S3 priorities and exploiting identified synergies, complementary resources and strengths. Of course, this matchmaking event aims to develop business.

Inter-regional or cross-border cooperation can help to exploit complementarities/synergies, pool resources and infrastructures across Europe, address non-technological issues (e.g. standards) and enlarge the potential user-base.

Futhermore, one other objective will be to foster regional initiatives in Auvergne Rhône-Alpes, for this core topics of Smart Plastics, such as Cité de la Plastronique or Plastronic training courses, and to create link with European initiatives, such as Greenomed.

This event will also help to highlight the high regional expertise in Smart Plastics and especially in Plastronics.

So welcome here      -     I wish you a very good workind day"