Tuesday 3 July 2012

EDANA's 2020 Vision

(Abby Bailey: photo by EDANA)

Abby Bailey, EDANA’s Marketing and Communications Director provided information from the “Nonwovens Vision 2020” study.  Key points were:
Globalisation will accelerate and economic power will move east.  Nonwoven markets will polarise with high volumes but low margins being realised from the emerging middle classes, while the developed world will need high margin, low volume products.

Sustainability will be the concern of the decade with a larger and wealthier global population growing more concerned about climate change and the release of GHGs. Nonwovens will benefit from sustainability opportunities in some sectors e.g. crop protection. Conspicuous consumerism is giving way to considered consumerism and prolonging the life of consumer products through exchange and on-line trading will increase.

Innovation is the key to addressing the other sustainability issues.  It will become more open and prolific and like the markets, will move east.  It will also have to deal with reduced raw material availability and the increasing...
demand for health care products.  Africa has already leapfrogged landline telephones and moved rapidly to mobile phones. 


New ideas such as “Matternet” could leapfrog the long and costly development of conventional road and rail networks and allow the delivery of medicines and other goods to remote areas by pilotless helicopters with payloads of a few kilos - to start with.


EDANA's supporting role


(Oliver Bisazza: photo by EDANA)

Oliver Bisazza, Regulatory Affairs Manager, EDANA (Belgium) provided an introduction to EDANA and its work before considering its role in Product Stewardship which he defined as the practise of making health, safety and environmental protection an integral part of the life-cycle of products.  EDANA’s Product Stewardship involved Technical Standards, Sustainability Challenges, Regulatory Challenges, Technology and Innovation, Consumer Pressures and Market Forces.  EDANA had committees or task forces appropriate to all of these.







(from 
EDANA Middle East Symposium  - Dubai - 14th and 15th Feb 2012)

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