My name is Joost d’Hooghe, I’m Commercial Director at DSM Engineering Plastics. At DSM Engineering Plastics we apply our science to develop new plastics.
One of the industries that we are very active in is the automotive industry. The core challenge that this industry is facing is to reduce the fuel economy. A very good solution to achieve that is to make cars lighter. What we’ve been able to do is to develop a complete new plastic ForTii™ PPA: a plastic that behaves like a metal. This way our customers can apply their existing processes, and still develop parts that are lighter than they were before. I am very proud of a solution we developed for the water management industry.
We all know water is becoming a big challenge fort he world, and actually existing solutions like copper and brass offer issues because of the substances they can release. What we’ve been able to develop is to offer a complete portfolio of plastics to make still water connections. One very nice example is a biobased plastic, EcoPaXX™, that is now being used to replace brass in faucets, to make sure that people have safe water.
We are here at Brightlands Chemelot Campus because of basically three reasons. One is, we looked for a space where we could bring all our activities under one roof. What we’ve been able te achieve here is to bring our science, our customer service, our injection moulding, our engineering, in this one single building. A second, very important reason is that in this area we find all the talent, the professionals that we need to achieve our goals. And a third one, very important for the future, is that in this area universities like Aachen, Maastricht and Eindhoven organize student activities that allow us to pick the talent that we need tomorrow.
Joost d'Hooghe 