High turnout at Glass for Europe’s technical workshop on the use of interleavants in the flat glass sector

On 8 June, Glass for Europe held the third of its 2021 workshops with national glass stakeholders.

This workshop was entirely devoted to interleavants in the flat glass sector. Despite the technical nature of this workshop, the high turnout is an encouragement for Glass for Europe to continue strengthening coordination across the flat glass sector thanks to this type of workshops.

During the workshop, Glass for Europe tried to shed light on the nature and use of polymer powders in the industry. These powders are used as interleavants to prevent glass sheets from sticking to each other, breaking and scratching and to minimise safety hazards and waste at time of storage and transportation. As such they serve as a temporary aid, which does not remain on the final product reaching neither business customers outside the sector, e.g. window or car manufacturers, nor end-consumers. It was shown how the sector applies and removes these powders from glass sheets and demonstrated that the way the sector uses these powders qualifies as ‘use at industrial sites’.

Glass for Europe took note of the pending interrogations from participants and promised to revert to the issue when greater clarity can be made, i.e. when more is known about regulatory obligations that could apply in the future.