Janet Preston joined English China Clays Int. (now IMERYS Minerals) in 1985 and has worked in the areas of coatings research, in the area of paints, inks paper coating and in printing science.
Whilst working at Imerys Janet graduated from University of Plymouth with an honours degree in Applied Chemistry. She then gained a PhD in Chemistry with the Interface Analysis Centre, University of Bristol, where she studied ink and coated paper interactions. Janet has around 90 publications in this area. She is currently a senior scientist in the company’s Carbonate Group.
In 2007 Janet was appointed as an Adjunct Professor (Docent) at Abo Akademi University in Finland, in the Laboratory of paper coating and converting.
Memberships: Chartered Chemist & Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Tappi (Former chairperson of the Tappi Fundamentals CIG), Member of the FRC Committee (The Pulp and Paper Fundamental Research Soc.).
Janet is married to David and has a daughter Laura.
Lisa Stephens is Division Manager, Pulp & Paper and Nanotechnology at TAPPI. TAPPI is not for profit, volunteer-led association focusing on emerging technologies and driving innovation for the paper and packaging industry. Their growing international membership include bioenergy and biofuels, renewable chemicals, sustainability, and nanotechnology areas.
Stephens has been with TAPPI since 1990. In her previous roles, she was also the PRESS Operations Manager, E-publishing Team Lead and TAPPI Journal Publisher, as well as positions supporting Information Services and Executive Team Management. She attended Clayton State College.
Mr. Summanen has had 30 years of experience within strategic, tactical, engineering, and sales roles that have provided him with a global scope after doing work in China, Southeast Asia, the US, Canada, and several other European countries. He has held various key management positions at Valmet managing numerous projects, such as starting up 10 new paper machines. He has also held several sales and business management positions as well, including head of the technology unit for mill improvements by delivering rebuild solutions for paper mills across the globe. As Director of Service, he was responsible for international business agreements and developing new services’ business models. In his current role, he is leading Fisher International’s European team by guiding and supporting companies in the pulp & paper industry and helping them make data-driven business decisions. This work is conducted by a team of senior consultants and experts, supported by the world’s largest database for the pulp & paper industry — FisherSolve™ Next and other advanced tools like market model based forecasting tool Fisher-STE. Marko Summanen earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Automation Engineering from the Technical Institute of Jyväskylä in Finland.
Bernard Lombard is in charge of trade and industrial policy at Cepi, the Confederation of European Paper Industries, which regroups 500 companies and 900 mills across Europe, ranging from SMEs to multi-nationals with a €90 billion turnover and a global production share of 22%.
A French national with an economic background and a strong experience of public affairs at EU level, he is in daily contact with companies and EU institutions officials advocating on behalf of an industry sector striving for competitiveness, sustainability and jobs. He has an extensive network of contacts with the European Commission and Brussels-based organisations such as Businesseurope, the Alliance for a Competitive European Industry, the European Shippers’ Council and AEGIS Europe where he chairs the Carbon Border Adjustment Task Force.
Trade, industrial policy and EU legislation impact assessment, competitiveness, business intelligence and transport are among his files. Within Cepi, he has been the Secretary of the Speciality Paper Working Group, which gathers leading companies in Europe.
Hans van de Nes is an energetic and creative person who believes in the combination of guts and common sense. As a young graduate, Hans was given the chance to kick-off his career in an internationally active family-owned paper recycling company. Currently, he is Managing Director for AP-Concept in the Netherlands and Board Member of the Melosch Group in Hamburg. He is honoured to represent the interests of the paper recycling industry in Europe as President of the European Recycling Industries’ Confederation’s paper branch ERPA. Hans has more than 25 years of experience in the paper and board recycling industry. He is happy to share this knowledge and advice others how to run a successful paper-recycling project.
Head of Sustainable Business Solutions, Mondi
20 years’ experience in Paper & Packaging serving Industrial and FMCG Brands with paper-based solutions. Point of contact in Mondi for collaboration with Retailers on achieving Sustainability goals of Replace, Reduce, Recycle packaging materials with sustainable concepts developed and promoted in Mondi EcoSolutions initiative.
Ping-keung Lui is Chairman of Bloomfield Group. Bloomfield Group, owned by the Lui family of Hong Kong, had its beginning in flax farming and fiber processing at Datong, Shanxi Province, China, in the early nineties last century. It extended downstream to specialty pulp making at Xingtai, Hebei Province, China, in the early years of this century, and since then its 10,000-tonne-capacity mill has been always running.
Robert Pable Mirande Duhalde has 18 years of experience in the Pulp and Paper Industry. He lived, worked and studied in 5 different countries throughout his career and is a Mechanical engineer with a technical master level course in pulp and paper and experience in the same field. Roberto graduated as MBA at IEEM in 2010.
Roberto has worked in a variety of areas, including with Tissue Production, Eucalyptus pulp product development, Eucalyptus plantations and Technical Customer Service for Pulp Sales. He has been technically involved in sales of NBSK, Canadian NBSK, BCTMP, BEKP, UBK and UBE.
Clothilde Manzano is Marketing Development Manager at Ahlstrom-Munksjö, one of the world's leading players in sustainable and innovative fiber solutions.
Amongst her current responsibilities is the exploration of new business opportunities and strategic partnerships focused on everyday life sustainable solutions.
Clothilde is an Engineer with a PhD in Biochemistry from Grenoble University in France and a MSc degree in Business Marketing from EM Business School. She has more than 10 years of experience in wide areas including Life Sciences industries and Specialty paper, with expertise both in the business and technical fields, in particular in business development and market Innovation.
Clothilde is convinced that innovation in fiber-based solutions is key to help better protect the planet and that looking ahead at the future with an analytical approach and an open mind is paramount for long term success.
Marion Sterner, working as head of R&D, is shareholder in Gruppo X di X Gruppo srl, a company generating patents on innovations in the packaging and mainly paper sector, developing them with industrial partners and licensing patents, know how and technology. She is co-author of the base patents of Gruppo X’s developments and has been working since 1990 in the field of process and material innovation. Main Gruppo X’s licencees are, among others, BillerudKorsnas, Nippon Paper Industries, BP Europack (today Amcor Flexibles).
Marion holds degrees in architecture from Germany and Italy.
Alexey is an engineer who’s prime interest is in packaging concept development, scale-up and best possible end-of-life scenarios. His wide ranging areas of professional expertise include paper physics, packaging and specialty papers, paper recycling, flexible paper packaging, barrier paper, moulded pulp, paper converting, filling & packing and packaging sustainability.
Prior to joining Nestlé Alexey was a Research Scientist at VTT and has also held various consulting and innovation roles. He has a B.Sc in pulp & paper technology and an M.Sc in forest bio-refineries from Saint-Petersburg State Forest-Technical University; an M.Sc. in chemical engineering from Lappeenranta University of Technology and a D.Sc (Tech) in paper converting & packaging from Tampere University of Technology.
Started with the mill (at that time Peterson Scanproof) in 1998 as laboratory engineer and after a few years worked as process engineer. In 2002 a PhD project on Barrier coating for grease proof paper was started. During that project the position at the mill was as development engineer. The PhD thesis was finalized in 2007. In the two years 2010-2011 the position was as Product Development Manager covering both business units Kraft and Greaseproof in Nordic Paper. The commercial side was entered in 2012 as an Area Sales Director Greaseproof for Central Europe and Middle East. The current position from 2016 is as Product Manager Greaseproof, which covers the responsibility for the products produced in the two mills Greåker (Norway) and Säffle (Sweden).
Dr Guy Newcombe is CEO at Archipelago Technology, www.archipelagotechnology.com , a Cambridge-based company focused on developing precision droplet creation and deposition systems. Guy studied physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, UK before embarking on a career in the world of inkjet and microfluidics. In the course of the past 30 years Guy has created technology in piezo, electrostatic and continuous inkjet. At Archipelago Technology, he is driving the development and applications of the Powerdrop print platform.
Fleur Rol was born March 15, 1992. She graduated from the engineering school Grenoble INP Pagora (International school of paper, print media and biomaterials) in 2015 and she obtained a Ph.D. in Materials from Université Grenoble Alpes (France) in 2019.
She is specialized in paper, biomaterials and especially microfibrillated cellulose. She has skills in materials characterization but also on materials processing.
Since the start of the FiberLean Technologies Ltd., Tom has worked as the Technology Implementation Manager, based in the UK. His primary responsibilities are to coordinate microfibrillated cellulose-related application studies in support of our commercial portfolio, principally supporting existing accounts, or securing of new ones. Furthermore, Tom is responsible for several of FiberLean’s paper and board new product development projects.
Graduated in formulation chemistry from ENSCL (Lille, France), Nicolas Lesueur joined Roquette in 2011 as a Business Developer for the paper market in France, Benelux and Switzerland. In line with his role, he provided technical support to his target customers and helped them develop the required solutions.
In 2017, he brings his experience in development for surface sizing and coating color, taking on the role of Coating Scientist.
He is currently technical responsible for the application laboratory for paper surface treatment and deals with all developments of innovative solutions in this matter, in particular the latex substitute in coating color and the starch-based barrier coating
Dr. Ying is an Associate Research Scientist from Dow Chemical’s Business Research & Development organization. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the Peking University. Then he earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, developing a new type of dynamic covalent chemistry named ‘hindered urea bond’ for smart materials design. With Dow, he developed expertise in polyolefin dispersion (POD) derived coating materials for various sustainable industrial solutions in paper packaging, metal beverage/food packaging, lamination adhesive, etc. He has authored 18 peer-reviewed publications and 6 patents in his career.
Final year doctoral researcher in Chemical Engineering at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland. Dissertation topic: “Processability of Nanocellulose-based Biodegradable Barrier Coatings”. M.Sc in Chemical Engineering from Åbo Akademi University.
Dr Vinay Kumar is a Senior Scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. He has been at VTT for almost four years. The main goal of his research work at VTT is to develop innovative solutions for improving the competitiveness of the forest products industry and sustainability for the world.
He has developed novel methods for large-scale processing of nanocellulose suspensions into coatings and films for various applications ranging from sustainable packaging to flexible electronics. In addition, he has expertise on various barrier and dispersion coating technologies for paper and board packaging applications.
He did is Doctoral and Master studies in Chemical Engineering from Åbo Akademi (Finland), and he holds a Bachelor of Technology degree from IIT Roorkee (India).
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