Members of the British Plastic Federation’s (BPF, London / UK; www.bpf.co.uk) EPS Group (www.eps.co.uk) have officially adopted “airpop – engineered air” as the new Europe-wide name for EPS. Group chairman David Emes said, “Airpop has been chosen because the name immediately brings to mind what the material is made of – air. In fact 98% air, to be precise. With just a tiny fraction made of polystyrene expanded to 50 times its own volume.”

The decision to rebrand the material as airpop was initiated by Eumeps Power Parts (Brussels / Belgium; www.eumeps-powerparts.eu) in May this year (see Plasteurope.com of 13.05.2014), and the name has successively been approved by European EPS trade associations and raw material producers.

The federation’s EPS Group includes airpop processors and converters, raw material suppliers, recyclers as well as suppliers of airpop processing, manufacturing and auxiliary equipment. The entire airpop industry in Europe is made up of around 200 converters, who process about 300,000 t/y of material into sheet, blocks, parts and products for the construction, civil engineering, HVAC, E&E, household goods and food industries.