Piergiacomo Guala confirmed as President of Proplast

on the occasion of the Members Meeting on Friday 21 June.

As every year, the Proplast Members Meeting is an opportunity for sharing and updating for all members, whose number is constantly growing. The Director, Eng. Giuseppe Augugliaro, has welcomed some of the companies who have recently joined the Consortium: Habasit Italiana, Ergotech, Coster, Check Solution, Idea Plast and EPF – Toshiba.
The Members Meeting approved the 2018 financial statements, which showed a positive operating result with an increase of about 9% in the turnover of consultancy to companies and an increase over the previous year of about 17% of active customers and proceeded the renewal of the Board of Directors for the three-year period 2019-2021 with the confirmation of the Presidency of Piergiacomo Guala.

Piergiacomo Guala was born in Alessandria in 1929 and realizes the company’s first exclusive products in the early 1960s: the guarantee closures for alcoholic beverages. Twenty years later his company is a world leader in the industrialization of the product and in the automation of the production process with plants in Spain, Brazil, Colombia, the United States and India. Piergiacomo Guala manages to diversify production and patents new items in rigid and flexible plastic in various sectors, reaching significant market shares also in Europe. He is a director of Gualapack SpA and SAFTA SpA. As president of the Industrial Union he promoted the establishment of the new university in Alessandria, he favored and financed the establishment of the new degree in engineering of plastic materials. At the same time, he founded the Proplast Consortium which today has over 200 member companies and 11 universities and is one of the most important research and service centers in the plastics sector at European level. In 1997 he was awarded the honor of Cavaliere del Lavoro and in 2002 he was awarded an honorary degree in mechanical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin.

Among the main activities, circular economy and 3D printing materials were the themes that characterized Proplast’s presence at the Mecspe of Parma and at Plast in Milan, the two most important trade fairs of reference for the manufacturing and plastics industries.
Other important research areas developed by the Proplast team are those of recycling and Bio materials, very sensitive and important issues for the plastic sector in this period, as well as that of thermoplastic composite laminates, in order to produce also aesthetic products and components. The possibility is to offer companies services ranging from support in the choice and characterization of materials to the study of design and engineering, passing from the implementation of solutions, to the realization of molds and pre-series molding.

Thanks to the cooperation with the partners, Proplast has expanded its fleet of machines and technologies with a new 280 ton press full-electric Toshiba, with new Piovan polymer treatment systems, with a new CMG-Piovan granulator and the Linari Engineering electrospinning technology.
Last but not least, the co-management activity of the CGREEN Regional Innovation Center – Green Chemistry and Advanced Material, together with P.S.T. and IBIS Consortium. There are numerous activities that the center carries out, such as the organization of meetings, networking initiatives, seminars and international conferences such as ECCP – European Conference on Conductive Polymers – and ECP4, focused on the circular economy, as well as the promotion of calls for tenders financing. From the beginning of 2019 to the present day, the CGREEN Polo members presented 11 projects on the PRISM-E Call for a total budget of € 6.1M, a total funding of € 3.2M and the recruitment to High Apprenticeship of 5 resources. In the near future, the Polo will deal with a further call for tenders (PASS) reserved for industrial research or experimental development projects, feasibility studies and services.