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reputation officer at the Reputation Institute, and Professor Wayne Visser, holder of the BASF-Port of Antwerp-Randstad Chair in Sustainable Transformation at the Antwerp Management School, who is supporting EPCA in exploring the concept of sustainability leadership.

For the fourth time, the EPCA Annual Meeting will also play host to the Grand Finals of the European Youth Debating Competition, where participants will present their ideas for shaping a sustainable future for plastics and petrochemicals. The competition is more than just about winning prizes: it draws together students between the ages of 16 and 19 from across Europe, representing different origins, genders, ages and cultures, and highlights the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. In addition, participants gain soft skills that will help them interact in a fast-changing and sometimes divisive environment.

DEBOTTLENECKING THE SUPPLY CHAIN HCB readers may be most interested in the business session on logistics and supply chain issues, which has the theme of ‘Investing in Infrastructure in Europe for Strategic and Sustainable Supply Chains’. Under the new chairmanship of Dirk Verstraeten, director of global logistics procurement at Covestro Deutschland, EPCA’s Supply Chain Program Committee (SCPC) is focusing on the strategic importance of transport infrastructure in Europe as a key asset for the sustained and sustainable growth of the European petrochemical sector and industry at large.

The session will emphasise the contribution that transport and storage infrastructure can make in terms of meeting the economic, energy and sustainability challenges of today and of the future, as well as the need to foster investment in new capacity and upgrading existing assets. In particular, given the projected 30 per cent increase in freight transport over the next ten years, Europe will need to shift further towards »

intermodal transport, which will bring rail infrastructure squarely into the spotlight.

With that in mind, the logistics and supply chain business session will feature presentations by Jacques Vandermeiren, CEO of the Port of Antwerp, Clemens Först, spokesman of the board of Rail Cargo Group and chair of the CEO Group at UIC and CER, and Bernhard Kunz, managing director of Hupac Group.

Prior to that, though, there will be a ‘Digital Café Workshop’ on innovation and digitisation in petrochemical supply chain, facilitated by Professor Ann Vereecke, partner at Vlerick Business School, who worked closely with EPCA on a joint study published in 2017 and a seminar in Brussels in June 2018 on the topic of digitisation, which sought to identify the extent to which the chemical supply chain has embraced digitisation and the benefits enjoyed by those who are leading the journey towards the Industry 4.0 future.

EPCA feels that, with digitisation really picking up speed in the sector, the time is right to tackle some of the larger digital transformation challenges. One particularly interesting concept that touches upon both digitisation and climate change, is the circular economy and how new business models, some of which are ‘digital-by-design’, can facilitate that transformation.

This session is strictly limited in size and attendance is by invitation only.

TRADE IN A CHANGING WORLD Wrapping up the 2019 EPCA Annual Meeting, the closing lunch on 9 October will feature a speech by Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) from 2005 to 2013, who promises to provide delegates with his interpretation of the fast-changing geopolitical and current turbulent trading environments and give an insight into how he sees future relations between Europe, the US, Russia and China developing under a more protectionist new world order.

Pascal Lamy is ideally placed to help Europe’s businesses reflect on the current geopolitical and trade environments and choose the appropriate paths to prosper, in cooperationwith their strategic partners around the world, and to reinvent themselves to continue to deliver sustainable and sustained economic growth in the evolving world ahead. HCB