Revision to ALPEMA Standards

31 August 2007.  The second revision has been made to the ALPEMA Standards 2000.  Go to Standards page for details.

Request to customers to safeguard confidential information

From time to time, customers provide ALPEMA Members with confidential information that has been obtained from other manufacturers.  We recognise that this is done to try to be helpful but stress that any information sent to a customer in confidence must be treated with care.  We have produced a short  pdf document on this topic which can be downloaded here.

Aluminum/Aluminium?

You may wonder why some countries use the aluminum spelling and others use aluminium. Well, the metal was discovered in the early 19th century by the British scientist, Humphrey Davy, who also discovered potassium, sodium, magnesium and calcium.  It is perhaps surprising that aluminium was discovered so late in human history given that it is the fourth most abundant element on earth.

Davy called the metal alumium which has the -ium ending adopted for most metallic elements.  But later he decided to change the name to aluminum, and this name was picked up by Americans.  However, the British word smiths where unhappy that this did not follow the rules of English so invented the name aluminium.

Information from 'A Short History of Nearly Everything,' by Bill Bryson, published by Doubleday, 2003

Contact

For further information or to give your views, contact

David Butterworth
ALPEMA General Secretary

Tel:  +44 (0)1235 525 955

E-mail: DaveButterworth@aol.com