LABOUR SHORTAGE EUROPE: Critical skill shortage in plastics processing industries intensifies

By Marilyn Gerlach, PIE correspondent

Plastics companies in major European countries are struggling more than ever to find workers in an ever-shrinking labour and talent pool, forcing them to cast their nets further afield outside of Europe amidst a quagmire of red tape. With the Baby Boomer generation retiring in a decade or so and the number of children born to successor cohorts declining, the labour force participation rate from Generation Z paints a picture that the plastics industry is not a compelling career choice.

In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, the foamed plastics and polyurethanes association FSK (Stuttgart; www.fsk-vsv.de/en) said around 15,000 qualified people – including engineers, chemical specialist processors, and plastic processing specialists – would be needed in the next three years. Klaus Junginger, FSK managing director, said, “We need about 1,500 Auszubildende [trainees/apprentices] per year, but we only get around 50% of that now. About 15 years ago, we got 100%.”

The number of new apprenticeship training contracts fell 40% in 2022 to 1,429 from 2,382 in 2017, according to the German association of durable plastic products and reusable systems, Pro-K (Frankfurt; www.pro-kunststoff.de). During that same period, the existing contracts also plummeted 40% to 3,891 from 6,558. The competition for recruiters has intensified such that more benefits are being offered to candidates. 

After the pandemic, the add-ons offered to candidates have changed. Mehmet Tarti, CEO of PolyTalent (Cloppenburg, Germany; www.polytalent.de), which recruits for German companies in the plastics industry, said it is now common to offer four workdays a week and the home-office option not only for executives, but also for junior positions in sales, IT, electronic developers in mechanical jobs, booking, and general administration. Continued training, health benefit sweeteners, fitness club memberships, bike-leasing benefits, free E-bike services, and free breakfasts or lunches are being offered to production-related positions, he said. “In the fierce competition for qualified employees, tube manufacturers are called upon to sharpen their profile as attractive and flexible employers with a meaningful sustainability strategy,” said Mark Aegler, president of the European tube manufacturers association, ETMA.

Related: German companies complain about shortage of skilled labour, excessive bureaucracy

German technical plastics products association TecPart (Frankfurt; www.tecpart.de/en) said 88.2% of surveyed German plastics processing companies experienced a shortage of workforce, with the biggest shortfall for plastics technicians and processing mechanics; this is followed by apprentices and plastics engineers. In the past eight years, around 43% of young people undergoing training as plastics and rubber process mechanics have left the profession, and there are currently still more departures than new training contracts, TecPart added. 

Sven Weihe, Pro-K managing director, said one option being tapped by member-companies is hiring Germany-based refugees, as employers – mostly those with staff numbering up to 50 and annual revenues of EUR 10-60 mn – do not have the time and money to scout around for non-EU workers. “There are a lot of challenges when hiring workers from abroad, like time for training and the language barrier. Our members also say there are a lot of bureaucratic hurdles for workers coming from Africa and other non-EU countries. That’s why a lot of our members say: no, we are not touching this area. It is too complicated, too many red tapes,” Weihe said.

Thorsten Kühmann, managing director of German engineering federation VDMA, which represents some 200 German, Austrian, and Swiss makers of machinery used in the manufacturing industry, told PIE that the labour problem is still manageable right now in his sector, but will become a massive problem when the Baby Boomers leave. “The problem is affecting us, but not to a substantial degree similar to the healthcare situation. 

“The recruitment abroad is not done in a huge and systematic manner. This is something we are working on right now,” Kühmann said. “There must be a way to coordinate this process of recruiting abroad instead of companies doing it on their own.”

According to a study by trade credit insurer Allianz Trade (Paris; www.allianz-trade.com), Germany would need 482,000 foreigners per year on average from 2024 onwards for all industries if it relied on immigration alone to mitigate the impacts of demographic change on the labour market. In such a scenario, the demand for labour migrants would be at similarly high levels as those in Italy and Spain, with a needed inflow of 414,000 and 338,000 migrants per year on average, respectively, the publication entitled European Labor Market: Migration Matters reported. The study noted that in France, which has a more favourable demographic development and a high labour force participation rate, 115,000 migrants would be required per year under the same “immigration alone” scenario. 

French plastics processing umbrella group Polyvia (Levallois-Perret; www.polyvia.fr) said the whole plastics industry in the country employs around 250,000 people, including 125,000 working directly in the plastics processing industry. The yearly need for new employees varies from 7,000 to 20,000, mainly for production lines, such as technicians, Polyvia chief operating officer Jean Chaillet said in an interview with PIE.

Last year, the industry had 18,000 open positions and only 50% were successfully recruited. “We were unable to recruit the rest of the 50%. So, we need to look for the workforce from other countries like in the EU and non-EU countries,” Chaillet said, adding that there is a need to recruit from non-EU countries in the long term because the usual source countries in Eastern Europe have dried up. “I work a lot on recruitment from Romania, for example. They now have exactly the same problem we are facing. They lack resources. They are also eager to get some people from non-EU countries,” he said.

Related: Plastics industry particularly hard hit by staff shortages – DIHK survey

In the UK, many Eastern European workers – a key source of labour – have returned home following Brexit and the pandemic. Hiring from this region has become difficult because the manufacturing industry there has become a force of its own, according to Ryan Kirby, global sales director of Listgrove (Stratford-upon-Avon; www.listgrove.com), a UK employment agency specialising in plastics, packaging, and chemical sectors. He said more and more European companies are engaging candidates outside of Europe, such as in Brazil, China, India, South Africa, and Turkey. “What we’re seeing in the market is roughly one in 10 companies are taking longer than 12 months to fill a vacancy, especially those requiring specific skill sets. Some 70% of businesses across many manufacturing sectors are struggling to find staff,” he added.  

The ZAV (www.arbeitsagentur.de/en), the German federal employment agency’s unit handling recruitment of foreigners, said the country recruits via its website and through partners abroad, such as the domestic employment agencies of a country or language schools. Hiring healthcare workers is a top priority, but it also seeks IT professionals and skilled workers for processing-related jobs in the manufacturing sector, such as mechanics. In 2023, the ZAV received enquiries from more than 233,000 foreigners for all types of jobs. Egypt, India, Mexico, Morocco, and Tunisia are the major source countries, ZAV spokesman Marcel Schmutzler said in an interview with PIE.

ZAV is currently assisting around 12,000 jobseekers from abroad, of which a quarter are IT specialists and engineers. Some 12% are those with skilled-trade jobs or technicians, such as electricians, automotive mechanics, plant facility mechanics, mechatronics, and welders. Some 3% are from transportation/logistics, such as bus and truck drivers.

Klaus Junginger, FSK managing director, said member-companies normally try to seek foreigners for machine-operating jobs, those who could schedule and plan the workload and shifts, as well as engineer-related tasks. “A key hurdle in recruiting abroad is that they are mostly underqualified,” Junginger said. He estimates around 20%-30% of the workforce of the member-companies came from outside of Germany, and added that there is a low rate of application from younger candidates due to negative public perception about plastics despite the usefulness of the material in our daily lives, the industry’s commitment to environmental issues, and the importance of plastics in modern technologies and processes.

“The problem right now is what we call ‘plastic bashing’,” Junginger said. “It’s not the kind of job the Germans want because they believe it’s not fine for them to tell other people – I work in the plastics converter branch – it’s an image problem. This is true especially for young people. We have noticed this trend for about five or six years now. The jobs are well-paid. They get good money. But for them it’s not fashionable, it’s not cool to work in this branch.”

The image problem, however, is surmountable, according to Bernard Merkx, MD of European Plastics Converters (EuPC, Brussels; www.plasticsconverters.eu). In an interview with PIE, he said the labour shortage is a challenge not only in the plastics industry, but also across the whole manufacturing sector in Europe, and this can partly be traced to a generational shift in values. “In Germany and in other European countries you see companies like railways, logistics, in restaurants, in hotels – they all struggle to get people who will work in a three-shift system or have jobs that require more physical work,” he said. “This generation prefers not to work 60 hours a week. They think 36 hours is already a challenge and mostly they do not want to stay their entire career with only one company. It has a lot to do with cultural changes, with the way people look at the way they want to live,” Merkx said. 

To address the critical skills shortage, he said, one solution could be for the plastics companies, preferably clustered within a small economic zone, to band together in setting up joint training programmes and pooling resources to train for specific skills common across the companies. He cited the case of Turkey, where a group of manufacturers concentrated within an area gathered to provide training programmes that guarantee employment to those who completed it. 

Over the next few days, PIE will lend you, dear readers, a sneak-peek into the labour market of Europe, how it came to be consistently short-staffed, and what possible solutions are on offer for the plastics industry. We talk to various industry experts, heads of plastics trade associations and companies, to get a firmer grip on the ever-expanding problem of labour shortages in EU member states. Some of the experts we interviewed have been quoted here as a teaser – PIE will publish the detailed Q&As over the next few days. If you are planning to recruit new staff or would like to advertise open positions, visit our Job Portal, devoted exclusively to the plastics industry.