Middle East pipe standards, training academy announced

Dubai — To help combat the problem of a lack of standards, adequate understanding about the benefits plastics pipes offer, and to promote education of engineers in the Middle East, polymer producer Borouge (Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.) announced at the recent Dubai Plast Pro 2007 conference conducted by Maack Business Services (Au, Switzerland) the creation of the Gulf Plastics Pipe Academy (GPPA).

Harald Hammer, Borouge CEO, told Modern Plastics Worldwide the institute is intended to be independent of his or other companies and is seeking other members such as polymer producers, pipe and fitting processors, designers and contractors, installers, and utility providers to join. The organization, so says Robert Lawrence, managing director of the GPPA (www.yourppa.org), is not limited to polyolefin pipes but any other plastics pipes such as PVC, ABS, but would exclude non-polymer pipe solutions.

Lawrence is well-known to the Middle Eastern pipe sector and readers of Modern Plastics [November 2003 MPW] who has long fought for uniform pipe standards in an area that exhibits corrosive soil and temperature extremes. He formerly held positions with regional pipe extruders Union Pipes Industry and Amiantit Oman. “The GPPA will offer a range of services based on the needs identified by those working throughout the plastics pipe value chain. The GPPA’s strength is its members are to represent all interested parties, enabling it to be a powerful lobby group on behalf of the industry and its customers,” he says.

Bjorn Klofelt, VP of the academy project sees benefits of developing this institution and applying the same, once the Middle Eastern academy has been established, to India and China where a lack of standards and good understanding of plastics pipe benefits is needed. For the time being, the institute will use temporary premises but it is planning to move into facilities adjacent to Borouge’s Innovation Center it hopes to open in 2009 in Abu Dhabi but until then training will take place elsewhere, emphasized Klofelt.

What the GPPA is looking for now are other members to join the initiative. Lawrence in the past has repeated warned of a lack of adequate plastics knowledge related to plastics pipe in the region has benefited alternative (ductile iron, clay, steel, asbestos cement, etc.) materials that don’t last as long nor meet the unique needs of the region. He says he hopes the message will be more concentrated with this initiative.—[email protected]