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The BPF - A History
| Founded in 1933, the BPF became the world's first trade federation for the plastics industry, and continues to play a vital role. The BPF was formally constituted in 1933 in the middle of what Robert Graves dubbed ‘The Long Weekend’ of the inter-war years, coinciding with the invention of Polyethylene, the first screening of the Hollywood film ‘King Kong’, and the darkening of the international scene as Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. |
| The BPF was born out of a pre-existing British Moulded Plastics Trade Association which had been founded in 1929 and the prime movers in its creation were two far- sighted journalists, M P McFarlane and EJ Wilkins, who together formed the editorial team of the ‘British Plastics and Moulded Products Trader’. From its outset the BPF embraced all the key elements of the industry- plastics processors, raw material and machinery manufacturers- and that single focus provided by the Federation for the whole of the industry has persisted until today as the BPF celebrates its 75th Anniversary. Not only is it the oldest plastics trade federation in the world, in keeping with the UK’s role as the birthplace of the commercial plastics industry in 1861, but it also provided the model for many other plastics trade bodies around the world, notably the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI) in the United States. The early work of the Federation focused on establishing credibility for a relatively young material and industry and a concerted effort was made in developing quality standards and a Hallmark Scheme. One example of the radical thinking then flowing through the industry was a competition in 1934 to find a new name for ‘Plastics’ as the collective noun was, even then, prompting some cause for concern. When the Second World War broke out in 1939 the BPF was resident in a prestigious London location, 12 Pall Mall, but few then had little appreciation of the important role plastics would play in helping the Allies to Victory, least of all the British Government. In a new world of centralised production planning and allocation of essential raw materials the BPF had its first major encounter with the full apparatus of the British State and engaged in regular dialogue with the ‘Industrial Planning and Progress Department’ of the War Office on the provision of plastics materials for the war effort. Plastics were being used as acrylic canopies in ‘Spitfire’ fighter planes; hand grenades were encased in ‘Bakelite’ and were standard issue to British infantry formations in Normandy; the paratroopers who dropped at Arnhem were suspended on Nylon parachutes; and Polyethylene radar cable coatings were critical to the country’s defence throughout the conflict. It was due to the BPF’s influence that a Plastics Controller was appointed at the Board of Trade, A. Vivian Beard of Distillers, to reflect this growing significance of the material in the war effort. To earn the currency to pay for war materials purchased from other countries export was crucial and the BPF was instrumental in setting up and administering a Plastics Export Group under the auspices of the Board of Trade Export Council. |
 BPF logos have changed over the years from the first (top) to the current (bottom)
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| With so many employees being called to the colours the plastics moulding industry almost came to a standstill in the early part of the war and the BPF had to intervene at the Ministry of Labour to have a Schedule of Reserved Occupations (SRO) established for the plastics industry to prevent crucial employees from being plucked by the military. This platform for detailed interaction with Government has since expanded so that today there is hardly an issue on which the BPF is not in almost daily contact with UK Government Departments, be it on the economic pressures facing the industry, export promotion, waste management, product safety, or on the government’s general support for manufacturing. The BPF has become the leader for the management of issues in the UK plastics industry, its reputation forged by its central involvement in a series of high profile issues which featured heavily in the media. In the 1980s it faced a public crisis of confidence in the safety of cling film. A miscomprehension of the toxic status of plasticizers was exacerbated by in-fighting within the industry. BPF managed to inject reason into the situation and worked closely with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fishery and Foodstuff to provide guidance on the correct use of cling film particularly in the light of newly emerging cooking technologies such as the microwave oven. |
 Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher's Secretary for Trade and Industry, Sir Keith Joseph, speaks at the 1979 Annual Dinner whilst BPF President, Harry Kleeman, looks on
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In the 1990s the Federation became embroiled in the highly emotive cot death issue. TV’s Cook Report created a public panic when it backed a claim that additives used in plastics cot mattresses could release highly toxic chemicals and cause infant death. The BPF took the lead in representing the industry in two public enquiries and won vindications of the safety of plastics materials in Reports published by Professor Paul Turner in 1990 and Lady Limerick in 1998. BPF has been prescient in anticipating some of the big issues of today at a very early point. It had established an Environment Committee as early as 1970 and by 1974 had published JJP Staudinger’s edited volume, ‘Plastics and the Environment’, the contents of which still read freshly and are fully valid today. As early as 1981 the BPF financed and directly managed a PET Bottle Recycling scheme – PET-A-BOX – in West Yorkshire to assist the establishment of the emerging PET Bottle industry in the UK whilst in 1989 it financed and, again, directly managed, a three-year plastics recovery project in Sheffield, Sheffield Reclamation Limited. By 1990 it was in a position to showcase a stand entirely devoted to ‘Plastics Recycling in Action’ at the Interplas fair where it constituted the main feature of the event. The BPF has been a prime mover in creating strong representation for the plastics industry at the European level, even before the UK became a member of the European Union. It was the BPF which issued an invitation to representatives of the Plastics Associations of all the European Free Trade Area countries to an exploratory meeting in London in 1961, presided over by the BPF’s Chairman, David Radford, and as a result the European Free Trade Area Plastics Association was constituted. |
| Today the BPF takes a leadership role in the European Plastics Converters Association, based in Brussels, and in early 2008 was providing not only the President, but also a Vice- President and the Chairman of its Communications Committee. With the European polymer producers’ organisations the BPF has always had close links and this relationship was consummated in a formal Agreement with the newly constituted PlasticsEurope when its Northern Region affiliated to the BPF in 2004. In 1964 the BPF became a founder member of the European Association for Plastics and Rubber Equipment (EUROMAP) and today carries the responsibility for its Communications function. From its origins the BPF has built up an extremely strong global brand for the UK plastics industry. Today this is manifested by a powerful website which attracts over 1.5 million visitors per annum. Key to this brand building has been the BPF’s participation in trade exhibitions in the UK and overseas. In 1951, inspired by the Festival of Britain and the BPF’s pre-war experience of organising the Plastics Section ot the British Industries Fair, normally held at Olympia, the BPF created the British Plastics Exhibition with Iliffe and Sons. This evolved into the current ‘Interplas’ fair now organised by Reed Exhibitions with the BPF as a major sponsor. The BPF has been a keen supporter of Germany’s Kunststoffe fair as a means of accessing global markets since 1959 when it co-ordinated the presence of the British Group with the help of the Board of Trade. With the emergence of global markets the BPF’s export leadership activity has intensified so that in 2007-8 the BPF not only promoted its brand at Kunstoffe but was present in force at Plastindia in New Delhi, Plastpol in Kielce, Poland,Chinaplas in Shanghai and Plasteurasia in Istanbul. |
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A key feature of the BPF’s evolution has been its strong interaction with the UK’s plastics trade press notably Plastics and Rubber Weekly which was first founded in 1964, a relationship which today is strengthened by the BPF’s association with PRW’s Plastics Industry Awards.
The BPF is proud of its heritage and strongly believes that the history of plastics in the UK is a manifestation of the British industry’s depth of experience and expertise. It was reminded of this recently when it rediscovered a film commissioned by the Federation in 1961 to mark the Centenary of the introduction of ‘Parkesine’. ‘The Shape of Plastics’, directed by Alan Pendry, a well known documentary maker , won the Gold Medal at the Bilbao International film festival in 1962 and was the official British entry in the Moscow Film Festival. A copy has been lodged with the Plastics Historical Society and extracts are shown on the BPF’s website. The film illustrates very clearly that the industry of the past is very much a part of the industry of the future. The British Plastics Federation’s links with the Horners’ Award, provided by The Worshipful Company of Horners to promote innovation in plastics, date from 1947 and again the UK can claim a ‘first’ in that the Horners Award is the world’s oldest plastics award. Throughout its history the British Plastics Federation has been at the cutting edge of technological innovation and in 2008 it launched the world’s largest online Plastics Encyclopedia – ‘Plastipedia’ – along with the world’s first online plastics industry social network – ‘Plastbook’. |
 Frames taken from the film 'The Shape of Plastics', directed by Alan Pendry, that won the Gold Medal at the Bilbao International Film Festival in 1962
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