Plastindia Foundation’s Knowledge Centre, which is coming up near Vapi in Gujarat, will offer online courses from this year to upgrade the skills of those engaged in this industry and start undergraduate and postgraduate courses thereafter.

For this, the Centre has signed MoUs with the Universities of Massachusettes and Wisconsin in the US. The university is being set up by an industry and would offer industry-friendly education, said Bipin Shah, President of the Foundation, here on Friday. The first four-year degree course to be offered will be in polymer engineering.

The Centre is being set up on a 46-acre area near Vapi where about 2,000 units manufacturing plastic and chemicals are located. The Centre will have a township with a constructed area of three lakh sq ft, housing a college, hostels and other amenities within the campus. The Centre will be a provider of specialised degree education, continued education and training and research and development with a view to enable the Indian polymers and plastic industry to achieve higher growth.

The Centre will offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses in polymer technology, polymer processing technology and moulds and design technology, besides management and entrepreneurial development courses, he added.

Shah said Plastindia, set up in 1987, will organise its ninth plastics exhibition and conference at Gandhinagar in 2015. About 600 delegates from 40 nations are expected to participate in the event, which is expected to attract over one lakh visitors.

In the next five years, western India’s consumption of materials is expected to increase from eight million tonnes to 20 million tonnes annually, providing a huge opportunity to the plastic industry.

India currently exports plastic processors worth Rs 25,000 crore per annum. Compared with the US (56 kg per capita), China (10 kg) and the world average (27 kg), India’s per capita consumption of plastics is only 7.5 kg.

 

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