Speaker interview: Alex Nguyen, SIKORA International Corporation

In this interview Alex Nguyen, SIKORA International Corporation's Business Development Engineer, gives us insight into his company, industry developments and challenges the sector has had to overcome.

Alex is the Business Development Engineer for the Plastics business unit at Sikora International. He focuses on helping customers automate and standardize the process of inspection and sorting of polymers, films, and sheets. 

 


What are the biggest challenges facing the market today and how can this be overcome?

The biggest challenges that face the market is the need for more plastics; we’ve all witnessed the importance of plastics first hand and how they are beneficial in all aspects of our lives.  How do we produce more responsibly and in the same token recapture the majority of used plastics and convert them to be used again?  These challenges can be overcome via education and openness to change of our habits to protect this important resource.

 

In your opinion, what do you consider to be the greatest development in your industry in the last decade?

One of the greatest developments in the past decades are sustainable polymers: Polymers that are derived from renewable resources.

 

How do you see the sector developing in the next five to ten years?

Plastics are already a big part of our lives and will continue to be tied in with our daily activities. In general, I think we will see that sustainable plastics market grow as more and more polymer producers look into innovative ways to manufacture them bringing the cost down.

 

You will be speaking at AMI’s plastics industry expos in Cleveland in November, could you give us a preview on what you will be talking about?

I’ll be discussing the importance of autonomous inspection and technological advancement, citing SIKORA’s Purity Concept V system as an example of such technology. This device is our innovative inspection tool that gives polymer manufactures the ability to speed up the process of inspection and sorting. Industry wide this is still done manually which is time consuming and allows for a high margin of error. The tool provides the user repeatable results with valuable data such as of the amount of contaminations present, size of contaminations, and colour of the contaminations to name a few.


Join us at the upcoming Polymer Testing World Expo to hear from Alex Nguyen.