Sylvain, Jute Lab Sales manager tells us about JEC

A few weeks ago, we went to the Paris JEC to represent the Bangladeshi jute fiber as an innovative natural reinforcement for the composite industry.

What is the JEC you ask? Good question! To be honest the acronym does not seem to refer to anything (I looked really! Wikipedia and everything) but its importance is pretty big in the composite industry. JEC usually refers to both the organization and the showroom that takes place thrice a year (once in Asia, once in America, and once in Europe, France to be exact, where we were).

Who are we you ask? Another good question! We represent a Bangladeshi based social business whose purpose is to preserve the jute industry in Bangladesh, which possess a unique and centuries-old know how and participates to the livelihood of over 30 million people.

Why Jute Fiber you question now? Yet another brilliant inquiry, you are on fire today! Well on the technical side jute has a better weight related performance and better safety performance compared to glass. And on the sustainable side it is biodegradable, non-toxic, non-abrasive and has low-energy requirement for production. Furthermore, as we mentioned before it has a real social relevance for both Europe and India.

What is Bangladesh you say? Ok let’s not push it, you have heard of Google before right?

The European meeting is supposed to be the bigger one; two giant halls more or less strategically divided between the different players of the industry:

• The chemical makers, mainly composed of resin producer, and a few ones that deal in chemical treatment of reinforcements
• The machine tools’ producers, with automatons that range in all size shape and form, from Wall-E to Mad Max.
• Finally, the raw material producers: mainly carbon fibers, glass fibers, and us, your friendly neighborhood natural fibers-men

Well when I say us I’m slightly exaggerating since we did not have an actual booth, but lonesome cow-boys don’t need no home, we are wandering heroes. We did however have the opportunity to display some prototypes besides our dear Flax friends, which may not seem like much but is quite important at the JEC.

Everyone here has an agenda (us too one might argue, but for us it’s different, because we are right 😀 Saving the planet doesn’t count as an agenda right? I’m sure we can find a more positive word for it). Everyone is trying to sell his products; and displaying prototypes is a big part of that, as well as participating to conferences.

Picture it as one huge yard sale except the used GI-Joe is a brand new carbon fiber hood for some automobile we will not name here since they did not pay us to do it.

The rest of it is meeting as many people as you can to present them your product, which means lots, lots (LOTS) of walking in this huge place. You can identify the most perseverant companies by their gait at the end of the three days. If they walk like old ladies (or gentlemen), you can imagine they had a rough three days. Which as you guessed we did, we are men on a mission after all (I’m not being sexist, we were actually only two male there).

We left our heads full of dreams (and noises and smells of huge machinery and intoxicating chemicals), our pockets full of business card and our suits littered with jute fibers from the many samples we handed out. A good three days all in all, with hopefully some great prospects of converting the industry to jute fiber, one composite part at a time….But that is a story for another time.

See you around folks !