Despite Covid, pinfa members see opportunities for PIN FRs with the Green Deal and new applications. Pinfa’s second online General Assembly discussed results of projects underway on impacts of FRs on smoke, with Hervé Feuchter, CREPIM, and planned on FRs in plastics recycling, with Elke Metzsch-Zilligen, Fraunhofer LBF.
An overview of the EU’s new Green Deal Chemicals Strategy, by Blanca Serrano, Cefic, showed opportunities for PIN flame retardants, with the EU vision to maximise benefits of chemicals and be the world benchmark for chemical safety. The Strategy will demand more data on chemicals’ health and environmental performance, and offer innovation funding. Imports of chemicals, for example in imported plastics, should be better controlled than currently under REACH. PIN FRs can aim to achieve the new Chemical Strategy’s “safe and sustainable by design” principles. pinfa suggests that fire safety should be recognised as an “essential use” under the Strategy and will develop this discussion in 2021.
Timothy Reilly, for pinfa North America, and Cindy Liu, for pinfa China, presented pinfa’s international activities, in particular the pinfa-na industry formulator training workshop and an analysis of the China FR and FR-materials industries by Beijing BIT University (translation underway) and monthly pinfa-China online classes.
For 2021, in addition to ongoing projects, dialogue with regulators and stakeholders and engagement with Horizon Europe, pinfa will organise further thematic webinars, similar to the successful pinfa webinars on fire safety in e-mobility (summarised in pinfa Newsletter n°120).