We warmly welcome visits from anyone curious to find out more about us. After all, trust and understanding can only really be developed through face-to-face interaction. This, in turn, forms the basis for lasting good relationships with the people around us, in our town and in our region.

This is especially true for our immediate neighbours, particularly when it comes to plant 1 in Lohne. Urban development over the past decades here in the block between Bakumer Straße, Wiesenstraße and Straße Zur Baumschule has meant that we have moved ever closer together and, in some places, now border residential areas directly. For us, this poses a special obligation to uphold good neighbourship, for instance by regularly testing our noise emissions. A special challenge for the future concerns the optimisation of traffic management on Bakumer Straße with regard to our delivery traffic. We are currently working on a modern infrastructure concept to cement our good relationship with our neighbours in the long term and defuse potential areas of conflict as much as possible.

We are proud of our work and love to talk about it as often as we can. Excluding customer visits, we had a total of six company tours in 2018, during which we introduced ourselves and our work to various groups.

A further 21 visits were arranged in cooperation with schools, giving numerous young people an insight into our activities whilst offering them hands-on experience and food for thought in terms of their own career choices.

Another long-standing tradition at our company involves the so-called “Trial Days” for young people. During the Easter holidays, interested school pupils are invited to spend a day with us to learn about ten different apprenticeships. At ten stations spread across the halls and offices in plant 1, they can experience at first hand how apprenticeships work at Pöppelmann, with our own apprentices in attendance to tell them all about it. This event format has successfully established itself for potential new apprentices. After its launch in 2007, we initially ran it every two years before changing to an annual event from 2013. On average, some 100 pupils register to attend.

In October 2018, we welcomed representatives from the regional and local economy to discuss the topic of sustainability at the TOP Industry Forum, an annual symposium organised by Verlag Moderne Industrie, which we had the pleasure of hosting. Some 60 participants from a wide range of sectors and from all over Germany not only listened to specialist lectures but also engaged in lively discussions about the possibilities and prerequisites of a broad-based circular system for plastic products. The results of this dialogue with stakeholders and market participants have been incorporated into our sustainability strategy.

In November, the 1st Pöppelmann Researchers’ Sunday counted 1,025 participants, smashing all previous visitor records at Lohne Industrial Museum. It was a family day during which we presented plastics processing technology in a varied, child-friendly manner – and thus also made a statement regarding the current critical debate concerning plastic waste. A sequel is planned. After all, by engaging in dialogue about our work, we want to strengthen our connection to people in the region.