Media & event activities
As part of its outreach strategy to the various stakeholders, Petrochemicals Europe took part in various major stakeholder Webinars over the past few months. The organisation also received a few media requests to which it responded in cooperation with Cefic corporate communications department.
In September, we received a request from Usine Nouvelle, a French business magazine and provided answers to an interview regarding the economic trends in the petrochemicals industry. It resulted in a thorough analytical article “The petrochemicals sector has not said its last word” in which Philip de Smedt, Sector Group Manager (Lower Olefins and Aromatics) was quoted twice.
In October, Frans Stokman and Henk Pool, (Cefic Innovation, IT Recycle Lead) were interviewed by a journalist from Libération, the French left-wing newspaper on the issue of plastics recycling in association to the demand for oil. Despite the factual information we provided recognizing the need for solutions to plastic waste, the outcome of the interview was predetermined. However, not reponding to the interview would not have helped our case too as the journalist would have indicated our refusal. The article “How plastics recycling helps sell more oil and gas”, which meant exactly the contrary to what we said, demonstrated the need to do more to showcase all the initiatives our industry is taking to deliver on the EU Green Deal. This is currently what we are doing by collecting examples to present evidences of real life investments and progress on this theme to our stakeholders.
On every occasion where Petrochemicals Europe was invited to speak, the organisation signed media partnerships with the organisers, which included a speaking slot, a discount rate for our members and our logo on the event website to enhance the association’s and the industry’s visibility. These events included:
- 09/09: GLOBUC Circular Economy of plastics recycling (Philip de Smedt moderated a session on chemical recycling)
- 28-30/09: BGS Petrochemical and Refining Congress (Frans Stokman spoke during the panel on Energy Efficiency and Environmental Sustainability)