Plastic's fantastic future here

By Tom Clarke

New Zealand needs an investment strategy to encourage funding for research into technology, says Irishman Professor Roy Crawford, a world expert in the processing behaviour of plastics.

Professor Crawford has just taken up a chair in the mechanical engineering department of Auckland University.

He has joined the university after 27 years at Queen's University in Belfast, where he was professor of engineering materials and later director of the Polymer Processing Research Centre.

He says research work at Queen's had the cushion of the European Community behind it, and there were some "large amounts of money" available to increase the level of technology.

"I think New Zealand needs a similar type of investment strategy in the longer term to avoid difficulties in the future, because the rest of the world is investing very heavily in technology," he says.

"I'm still on a learning curve over funding opportunities, but I've been told by my colleagues that the amount of money in the pool is going to be significantly less than I've been used to."

But Professor Crawford says good projects still get funded, and he will be looking increasingly to the private sector for joint ventures.

"We tend to do work that is directly relative to industry," he says. "It's quite reasonable that you would expect industry to pay for that, or at least pay part of it. My experience in the past has been that if you can demonstrate to business a value in what you're doing, then money can be forthcoming, and that applies to small industry as well."

He plans the establishment of a plastics and composites research centre at the mechanical engineering department, as a focal point to attract industry and research funds to the university.

"I've been very energised by the people I've seen so far who are very excited at the possibilities from having a plastics research facility on their doorstep," he says.

Professor Crawford says many of the New Zealand companies he has come across so far are innovative, very often with equipment that is not very sophisticated. What some are doing with this equipment makes their achievements all the more impressive.

His aim is to create a state-of-the-art facility here that will be accepted as the best in the world.

"The quality and the skills and the innovation here, would compete with the best that I've seen anywhere," he says, " and I have no worries that we can achieve the aim."

Professor Crawford has carried out research on most plastics processing methods including injection moulding, thermoforming, compression moulding, powder moulding, blow moulding and rotational moulding.

He had become "restless" at Queen's University, he says, and had felt "very comfortable" with New Zealand when he attended a conference here.