Category: Plastics-ITC

Queensland Plastics Industry Training Committee (Inc. 0399)
SUMMARY OF CHAIRMAN’S ADDRESS
39th AGM of QPITC, 16 December, 2024.

This Association was incorporated in Queensland on 5th July 1984 under the Associations Incorporation Act 1981.

The advancement of the industry’s polymer technology training is the primary function of this Association.

Our key enabling strategies are short courses and apprenticeships, and we advise government training policy development.

In this industry, an apprenticeship is an educational program aiming to improve the enterprise capability and to help the business grow and prosper.

This is my opportunity to thank both the Queensland State Government and all the members of the Queensland Plastics Industry, and our allied industry friends.

James Hunter
Chairman of QPITC,
December 2024.

 

Queensland Plastics Industry Training Committee Inc
30 June 2024 FY Financial Report (click to download PDF 179kb)

The award will be made to PARTEC Composites Technician apprentices with achievements in marine composites. Graeme Margetts, composites trainer at PARTEC Institute will manage the selection for this year, being the inaugural presentation of this award and a memorial to Roger Wolfe and his devotion to composites in boatbuilding.

The Rodger Wolfe Achievement Award will be presented to a high achiever Composites Technician who works at Riviera Australia, and who graduated from Partec Institute Composites Training Centre in 2024.

Zidane Zinedine Farkas completed his apprenticeship with the Gold Coast based internationally famous boat manufacturer Riviera Australia, and it is a noteworthy coincidence that his surname is the same as the Czechoslovakian “Farkush”  for wolf, and so it is fitting that he gets the Rodger Wolfe award.

From 1 July 2024, eligible employers that hire a new or recommencing apprentice training in a qualification and occupation on the Priority List, can apply for a Priority Hiring Incentive of up to $5000 in the first year of an apprenticeship, paid over two installments of:

• $2,000 at 6 months and $3,000 at 12 months (full-time)
• $1,000 at 6 months and $1,500 at 12 months (part-time)

Learn more about the Priority Hiring Incentive

This note is to remind you of an important new classification for PARTEC apprentices.

All of our Plastic and Composites apprenticeships are now classed as occupations which can work in the clean energy business.

This means that if you work on solar power, bioenergy, wind power, battery storage, geothermal, etc, then the apprentice (not the employer), can claim up to $10,000 in support during the apprenticeship.

See Clean Energy Apprenticeships Program

The ‘sign up’ contractors (Australian Connect Australia Providers – ACAP) have been designated as your advisors for this bonus.

Sending “used plastics” to landfill is actually “rational economics”. However, sending anything to landfill is, in the long term, just an “out of sight, out of mind” and moderately irresponsible strategy, particularly for heavily populated city and suburban areas.  In such areas, it is also “rational economics” to collect and reprocess the plastics in bulk.

However, for smaller regional cities and towns, who may choose to collect and reprocess used plastics, the bulk reprocessing is not feasible.

The University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ) in Toowoomba, is well advanced in a Commonwealth Government funded program to develop strategies which are suited to regional situations. The UniSQ program is known as the SURF-NO WASTE Pilot Precinct program.

The PARTEC Institute (Plastics Training Centre) is a collaborator with UniSQ in this project. PARTEC is co-funding and developing a plastic reprocessing system “post-MRF” (Mechanical Recycling Facility) which will be feasible for regional towns.

The old financial incentives system is obsolete and now all financial assistance for employers based on wage subsidies.

Employers can claim 10% of wages paid to the Australian Apprentice for the first and second 12-month period (up to $1,500 per quarter) and 5% of the wages paid to the Australian Apprentice for the third 12-month period (up to $750 per quarter).

The Australian Apprentice must be undertaking Certificate III or above qualification with an occupational outcome as listed on the Australian Apprenticeships Priority List, and so I have checked this list and noted that this now means that all of the Queensland Plastics Industry Apprenticeships based on PMB40121 Certificate IV Polymer Technology, and PMB30121 Certificate III Polymer Processing are now therefore eligible for this funding assistance.

These are, of course, all the plastics apprenticeships listed with graduates to-date on the Plastics-ITC website, and the Federal Government is now able to collect statistics for the Plastics Technician Occupation which is now also a declared “shortage” (at last).

To check further on your eligibility and for more information about applying, contact the provider person who arranged the “sign-up” for your apprentice(s) (NB they get paid to do this for you).

QP-ITC and PARTEC are collaborating with Casey Pfluger are collaborating in this project regarding plastics product design and other assistance.

They are finalist in Bionics Challenge 2021 (Bionics Queensland). The final product will be prototyped at PARTEC and go to a local moulder.

Cortex Brainwave Technologies is developing a high-quality ‘tuneable’ medical sensor that utilises both fNIRS and EEG and far exceeds the capability of any standalone EEG or NIR sensor on the market. The development of consumer, portable and user-friendly brain-computer-interfaces (BCI) is dependent on both sensors and the hardware. Monitoring of home-based patients using self-applied sensing systems is one of the most challenging applications of wearable sensing and is plagued with motion artefacts, interoperability issues, interference (EEG) & data quality.

When combined with wearables for IoT systems, they face the problems of unreliable mobile data networks, power/battery management issues as well as false positives and negatives. The combined problems make the use of EEG-based medical sensors unsuitable for many medical scenarios. With substantial challenges impeding the performance of existing BCI implementations, Cortex is developing a new comfortable, convenient, and high quality NIR sensor.

The initial use case for the Cortex Neurosensor will be a home-based neurofeedback therapy using a portable BCI headset for the almost 1 in 5 Australians affected by brain disorders such as acquired brain injury, learning disabilities, stroke, ADHD and autism. To date, there have been limited therapeutic interventions available and a significant social and economic cost involved for affected individuals and their family members. The team is inspired by the personal experiences of the Neurosensor inventor and his young daughter.

The following sections have been added to the Brief Chronology of Plastics Industry Training and the QPITC:

(83) For 2020 the COVID-19 cash-feed from the ATO was a brilliant strategy which enabled us to work through the crisis. Many plastic moulders are now very busy, having picked up good business from May 2020, after the initial slump. And they are putting on new apprentices to keep pace with demand.

(84) The review of the PMB plastic processing training package took almost 3 years, and it is awaiting finalisation of the operational aspects with State and Federal Govts. The review did not generate any formal “Skillsets”, which are short courses from the trade technologies. We have applied to write up drafts and get a trial of a few short-course skillsets in Queensland to be delivered by Partec Institute.

 

Units 1 to 18 of Polymer Materials are now available online for the low price of $2.70 each.

• Unit 1 – The Nature of Stuff  FREE with any other purchase
• Unit 2 – Polymerisation – The Making of Plastic
• Unit 3 – Predicting Polymer Properties from Structure
  Unit 4 – Thermoset vs Thermoplastic Plastics
• Unit 5 – Compounding for Properties
• Unit 6 – Plastics Processing Machines Techniques
• Unit 7 – The Rheology of Plastics
• Unit 8 – The Properties of Plastics
• Unit 9 – Engineering Plastics
• Unit 10 – Reaction Injection Moulding
• Unit 11 – Rubber
• Unit 12 – Plastics Used in Packaging
• Unit 13 – PET
• Unit 14 – Fluoro
• Unit 15 – Plastics in Textiles
• Unit 16 – Fibre Reinforced Plastic
• Unit 17 – Building with Plastic
• Unit 18 – Recycling Plastic

Learn more or purchase the resources here

 

• These resources will be emailed to the purchaser in PDF format.
• These resources were designed to be a resource for Diploma of Engineering students.
• We recognise that certain purchasers may need multiple copies. The $2.70 price has been set very low to encourage purchase of originals and to discourage excessive reproduction.

Queensland Plastics Industry Training Committee (Inc. 0399)
SUMMARY OF CHAIRMAN’S ADDRESS
35th AGM of QPITC, 11 December, 2019.

This Association was incorporated in Queensland on 5th July 1984 under the Associations Incorporation Act 1981.

The advancement of the industry’s polymer technology training is the primary function of this Association.

Vocational education & training for polymer processing must focus on commercial & practical application of the science of the materials and the science of the manufacturing processes.

In this industry, an apprenticeship is an educational program aiming to improve the enterprise capability and to help the business grow and prosper.

Our industry enterprises give 65% of apprenticeships to existing workers who have proved their worth in the workplace over time periods from two to ten years of employment.

The 20-30 years’ age group of apprentices makes up 50% of the apprentice numbers, with the next 25% being under 20 years of age, and “mature-age” apprentices ranging between 30-45 years of age, being the final 25% of the total of over 120 in continuous enrollment across the specialized polymer processing sectors.

The Queensland government stands out from the other States, with its recognition of these Trade Apprenticeships, and an intelligent funding system for the governance of the training delivery.

This is my opportunity to thank both the Queensland State Government and all the industry sectoral committee members, on behalf of the Queensland Plastics Industry as represented by our Association Members and our allied industry friends.

James Hunter
Chairman of QPITC,
December 2019.