WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — European visitors’ recent first impression of Pennsylvania College of Technology’s Plastics Innovation & Resource Center will lead to a second look when they promote the facility to a continental conference next year.
The four international guests and their American host talked with employees and students in labs featuring each of the college’s five plastics processes — injection molding, extrusion, blow molding, rotational molding and thermoforming — during a March tour of the PIRC and its Thermoforming Center of Excellence.
The group also learned from Center Director C. Hank White about the PIRC’s role in helping the industry remain competitive.
“We want to be the place to go in North America for training and research and development,” White told the group.
The goal of the tour, sponsored by the National Society of Plastics Engineers Thermoforming Board Executive Committee, was to showcase the facilities to the mutual benefit of the PIRC and its potential international partners, and — judging from the response — it was an objective well-met.
“Our visit was indeed an eye-opener!” said Jeff Pitt, director of Plas-Logic Ltd. in the United Kingdom. “In Europe, and, in particular, the U.K., there has been a lack of comprehensive ‘ground roots’ training for students and apprentices wanting to follow a specific practical plastics technology.”
“The norm for training in that sector has been basic, practical engineering courses,” he explained, followed by more specific training “downstream” — more often than not the direct responsibility of employers.
“To have the facility on offer at Penn College would relieve the employer of that burden and would, in my view, be a great attraction,” Pitt said. “To that end, we will promote [the PIRC] to the European audience that attends our 2016 European Thermoforming Conference in Barcelona.”
Pitt was accompanied by Andy McGarry, managing director at Cox Wokingham Plastics, also in the U.K.; Lars Ravn Bering, managing director at Gibo Plast, Denmark; and Francois Berry, president at Top Clean Packaging, France. Joining the contingent were Kate Scott, from the state Department of Community and Economic Development, and J.P. Tambourine, manager of economic development for FirstEnergy.
The visit was coordinated by Ed Probst, principal at Probst Plastics Consulting LLC in Wisconsin.
For more information about the PIRC, visit www.pct.edu/pirc or call 570-321-5533.
For more about the college – one of only five plastics programs in the nation offering degrees accredited by the Engineering Technology Accreditation Commission of ABET – visit www.pct.edu, email admissions@pct.edu or call toll-free 800-367-9222.