Plastic heat treatment equipment operator
Also called materials engineer, heat treat operator, heat treat technician
Plastic heat treatment equipment operators manipulate plastic products using machinery such as furnaces or flame-hardening machines in order to temper, anneal or heat-treat. They set up the machinery and read the production instructions to determine the furnace temperature. Plastic heat treatment equipment operators remove products from machines, let them cool down, examine and test products to see if they conform to specifications.
What you'd do
Plastic products machine operators · ILO- Operating and monitoring machines which knead and blend compounds to obtain plastic materials
- Operating and monitoring machines which shape plastic materials by moulding, extrusion, blowing, cutting and other means
- Operating and monitoring machines which laminate plastics and plastic-impregnated materials or produce fibreglass
- Encasing uncoated wire, cord, cable and optic fibre in plastic
- Examining outputs for defects and conformity to specifications
- Recycling waste plastic materials
- Making artificial eyes and contact lens discs, making and repairing spectacle frames and plastic parts of orthopaedic appliances
- Indoors
- On your feet most of the day
- Lots of contact with people, mostly with colleagues
- Some freedom to decide
- Often more than 40 hours a week
- Deadlines every day
- Very repetitive tasks
Will there be jobs?
Yes, good prospects10 EU countries are short of plastic products machine operators now, but fewer jobs than in most work will need filling by 2035.
Solid: measured. Dashed: forecast.
What does it pay?
About averagePay depends a lot on the country: from about €1,000 a month (Bulgaria) to €5,500 (Denmark), before tax.
Pick a country at the top of the page to see typical pay there, for people under 30, and compared with all jobs.
Among plant and machine operators, and assemblers in the EU, women earn 21% less per hour than men. Plant and machine operators, and assemblers · Eurostat
What do I need to study?
Upper secondary or vocationalUpper secondary or vocational training in chemistry is the usual route.
Pick a country at the top of the page to see where to study and the official course finders.
Will AI change it?
Very littleAI could help with only small parts of the tasks.
Average task score 0.17 on a scale from 0 (AI can't do it) to 1 (AI could do it fully).
See the score for each of the 7 tasks
Based on what AI could technically do when assessed in 2025. It is not a forecast for a future year, and not a forecast of job losses. Scores for plastic products machine operators. Source: ILO (2025), adapted (credits).