E-Weekly
Oct 5th, 2007                                Print this article

e-Weekly News Briefs Oct. 1-5

By Modern Plastics Editorial Staff

Bayer invests in catalyst research

Noting that almost all of its products are made with use of a catalyst, Bayer MaterialScience and Bayer Technology Services have signed a five-year agreement with the Aachen University’s Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) and the German state of North Rhine Westphalia to invest nearly €10 million in catalysis research center, which will employ 12 scientists. Bayer MaterialScience and Bayer Technology Services, will put up €6.05 million and €1.24 million, respectively, with the German state and Aachen University putting forward €2.7 million.

The center will occupy 400 sq m at the Seffent/Melaten site of RWTH’s Institute for Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry, with the lab currently being upgraded and the goal to start research by the spring of 2008.

Lanxess restructures, cuts Belgian jobs

With its Lustran Polymers business divested, chemical and plastics supplier Lanxess AG (Leverkusen, Germany) says a restructuring, which will reorganize its 13 business units into three—Performance Polymers, Advanced Intermediates, and Performance Chemicals—will begin in earnest this month. Lanxess plans to invest €1 billion over the next three years to realize its goals, with 60% of planned capital expenditures going towards capacity expansions.

Under the restructuring plan, Performance Polymers will include butyl rubber, polybutadiene rubber, semi-crystalline products, and technical rubber products, which were contained within Performance Rubber and Semi-Crystalline Product units. Engineering Plastics ceases existence. Advanced Intermediates will consist of the basic chemicals and Saltigo business, while Performance Chemicals contains inorganic pigments, functional chemicals, ion exchange resins, leather, material protection products, Rhein Chemie, and rubber chemicals.

As part of the strategy, Lanxess will realign its Antwerp unit, letting go of 127 of its employees, with many of those jobs now being outsourced. The company maintains two sites in Belgium that employ approximately 1500 in the production of raw materials for plastics, fiber glass, and rubber chemicals.

Coca-Cola partners for massive PET recycling plant

Beverage brand name owner Coca-Cola will invest $50 million into what’s being billed as the largest plastic-bottle recycling plant in the world, with an annual capacity of 100 million lb of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Located in Spartanburg, SC, the site will produce food-grade PET reclaim suitable for bottle-to-bottle recycling. Coke is partnering with United Resource Recovery Corp. (URRC; also Spartanburg) on a 30-acre site that will be completed in 2008. The operation is expected to create 100 new jobs over the next five years and, once at full capacity, will generate enough reclaim PET for two billion 20-ounce Coca-Cola bottles/year.

Founded in 1992, URRC created its patented UnPET process for chemically cleaning PET flake into a state suitable for food-grade packaging in 1994. Currently, Coca-Cola uses URCC’s prototype plant at the Spartanburg site, which has been operational since 2001. The expanded version will model Coca-Cola’s recycling facility that opened in Mexico City in 2005, which also applies URRC technology.

SPI honors safety in plastics plants

Rewarding workplace safety, the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI; Washington, DC) has recognized 192 plastics-related work sites. The full list of recipients is available here, with 50 Distinguished Safety Awards, 45 Achievement Safety Awards, 40 Merit Safety Awards and 57 Special Recognition Awards presented. The Distinguished Safety awards are presented to work sites with no Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recordable occupational injuries or illnesses involving lost workdays or restricted work activity in 2006. A 2006 SPI survey includes 2006 occupational injury and illness reports from 279 work sites, representing 66,466,676 employee hours from 32,736 employees. The incidence rate was 4.19 work-related injuries and illnesses per 200,000 hours worked, with a severity rate of 69.06 lost workdays per 200,000 hours worked.

Konarka secures $45 million in financing

Konarka Technologies, Inc. (Lowell, MA), an innovator in the development and commercialization of ‘Power Plastic’, a polymeric material that converts light to energy, announced that is has raised $45 million in private capital financing. “Konarka has aggressive plans to accelerate the development and commercialization of our polymer-based organic photovoltaic (OPV) technologies for consumer, commercial, BIPV and electronic applications,” commented Rick Hess, president and CEO of Konarka. “This latest round of financing will help to accelerate our plan to bring Konarka’s organic photovoltaic material, Power Plastic, to market.”

A new development in the commercialization of Power Plastic is Konarka Technologies’ agreement with Toppan Forms Co. Ltd. The two companies signed a joint agreement to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and commercialization of polymer-based organic photovoltaic technologies for consumer and electronic applications. Under the agreement, announced Sept. 10, the mutual goal is to bring Konarka’ Power Plastic, to market.

Organic photovoltaic material is a thin layer of polymeric materials, sandwiched between two printed electrodes. It can be manufactured by traditional printing processes and generates electricity upon exposure to light. OPV makes it possible for devices, systems and structures to have their own low-cost embedded sources of renewable power.

Names in the News

Ivan Drienik, founder and president of blowmolding tooling supplier R&D Tool and Engineering Co. (Lee’s Summit, MO) passed away unexpectedly on Sept. 6 at the age of 65. Born in Bratislava in the former Czechoslovakia in 1942, Drienik became an American citizen and served in the U.S. Army. He founded R&D in 1976 and grew it into one of the leading suppliers of packaging tooling. The National Tooling and Manufacturing Assn. (NTMA) is currently creating a scholarship in his name, with donations accepted by the NTMA’s Kansas City chapter.

New VP of the German association for plastics packaging and film producers (IK; Bad Homburg v.d. H.) is Roland Roth, board member of film extruder RKW AG (Worms). Roth replaces Rainer Kolar from films processor Bischof + Klein, who remains on the IK board of directors and is also the chairman of the trade group Industrial Film and Packaging.

Elmar Witten has taken the reins at Germany’s composite plastics trade group, the AVK (Frankfurt), succeeding Uwe Bültjer, who is retiring after leading the group for a decade. Witten comes to the AVK from TÜV Rheinland, and says one goal is to increase the number of seminars and training courses organized by the AVK.

Fluoropolymer supplier Dyneon, part of 3M, has named Netha N. Johnson as president and general manager. He takes over from Bill Myers, who become general manager of 3M Energy and Advanced Materials division in August.

Several personnel changes took place at polyolefins supplier Total Petrochemicals (Brussels, Belgium). Carl Van Camp is now senior VP of the polyolefin division, which is a merger of the polyethylene and polypropylene business units. He started working at Total’s predecessor company, PetroFina, in 1983. Francis Raatz is the new senior VP of the company’s research, technology, and engineering division. This business unit is a result of regrouping the R&D and the major project management/engineering divisions.

Tier One automotive supplier Lear Corp. (Southfield, MI) has named Matthew Simoncini as its new CFO, reporting to Lear vice chairman, James Vandenberghe. Simoncini was promoted from his post as VP of global finance and chief accounting officer. He joined Lear in 1999 when his employer at the time, United Technologies Automotive, was acquired.

Bayer MaterialScience LLC (Pittsburgh, PA) has named John Brandt director of new technologies and strategic initiatives in its future business group. Brandt came to Bayer in 1988 as a chemist in its coatings division. As recently as 2005, he worked out of Europe as the head of marketing and sealants for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Asia) region.

In additional personnel news, Bayer appointed Lennie Scott as manager of environmental governance in its NAFTA organization. Scott joined Bayer in 1987; in this new role, he will facilitate environmental work groups for air, water, and solid waste.

Briefs

Plastics and additives supplier Arkema (Paris) has acquired Coatex, a producer of high added-value acrylic polymers. The company has also decided to invest in a polyvinylidine fluoride (PVdF) plant in Changshu, China set to start up in 2011. Lando Ferretti, Arkema group president for technical polymers, says the decision to invest in China was based on expected growth in the Asian construction market for its Kynar-brand PVdF products. PVdF indeed appears to be in demand, with Arkema in the midst of expanding the capacity of its Calvert City, KY facility by 25%. This should be completed in the first quarter of next year.

Automotive parts supplier Toyota Boshoku Canada Inc., a subsidiary of Japan’s Toyota, has tasked blown film and coating lines manufacturer Macro Engineering (Mississauga, ON) to design, manufacture and install a custom-built extrusion coating line that will be used during the production of new automobiles. “This is a hugely important order for Macro,” said Steven Shi, area sales manager for Macro. The line will be installed in 2008 at a new Toyota facility in Southern ON, Canada.

The first supplier of formulated color for the plastics industry to become a partner of the color industry and designers website, matchmycolor.com, is Carolina Color Corp. (Salisbury, NC). With the partnership between the two companies, color professionals should be able to order their specified color, fully formulated, online. They can also make contact with experienced plastics masterbatchers for technical advice.

Processing equipment maker Davis-Standard (Pawcatuck, CT) has streamlined its customer-service department with a new system, DS5, designed to help customers avoid lengthy downtime. The program gives Davis-Standard service personnel and engineers immediate access to customer equipment via Internet. This remote diagnostic program allows a quick fix of problems regardless of machinery’s location around the world, says Tarek Adly, product manager of the company’s drives and controls division.

Additives and functional fillers supplier Süd-Chemie (Munich, Germany) has sold its Nanofil-brand organically-modified bentonite product range to the German subsidiary of U.S.-based Rockwood Specialties Group, for an undisclosed sum. This product range is used as flame retardants in wire and cable applications to optimize the mechanical properties of polyolefins, and in the film-extrusion sector, improve gas and solvents barrier properties. German federal antitrust authorities have already approved the deal.

DuPont Teijin Films (Richmond, VA) has come up with a proprietary way to customize its Mylar-brand polyester sealant film to provide controlled respiration. This permits tailored oxygen transmission rate for a range of fresh cut vegetables.

Stock shapes manufacturer Quadrant Engineering Plastics Products (Quadrant EPP; Reading, PA) has expanded its Fluorosint-brand range of proprietary polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) shapes for machining with a grade that can operate in extreme environments and at temperatures from –240°C to 260°C. Fluorosint HPV is intended for applications such as seals and bearings that require high wear resistance and low friction.

Laser equipment specialist Trumpf (Farmington, CT) has acquired 100% of Advanced Fabricating Machinery (AFM), Canada, a firm founded 1997 and owned since then 50/50 by Trumpf and Robert Watson. AFM, under the continued leadership of Watson, will serve the Canadian market as a sales and spare parts facility for Trumpf products.

Plastics and colorants supplier BASF (Ludwigshafen, Germany) is expanding its plant for low molecular weight, highly reactive polyisobutene (HR PIB) at its Antwerp, Belgium facility. The plant capacity is being increased by 25,000 tonnes/yr to a total of 100,000 tonnes/yr. Start up of the expansion is planned for March 2008. The material is used in adhesives, sealants, plastics, and as a lubricant additive.

Dow Chemical (Midland, MI) has acquired Denmark-based Edulan, an independent polyurethane (PUR) systems house specializing in rigid foam and elastomer technologies. In addition to Edulan’s business and production facility, Dow also acquires rights to all of its formulated and field-tested systems that it can offer to its own customers. In other news from Dow, the company has engaged Jacobs Engineering, a design contract firm, to handle an expansion by 180,000 tonnes/yr of polyols capacity at its Terneuzen, Netherlands plant. Work is expected to begin early next year.

Specialty resins and chemicals firm Lanxess (Leverkusen, Germany) is investing €10 million in an expansion of its ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer (EVM) capacity, bringing total capacity at its Dormagen, Germany plant to 15,000 tonnes/yr by 2009.

Fuwei Films Co. Ltd. (Beijing) has installed a trial BOPET (biaxially oriented polyethylene terephthalate) line at its Shandong subsidiary. The company will use the line, which can produce BOPET films with thickness of 12-50 micrometers and widths from 2.5 to 3.0m, to research new products. The line, which is designed with an annual capacity of 1500 tonnes, is described as the first domestic pilot-production line using a multi-channel die for multilayer film. BOPET film is used to package food, medicine, cosmetics, tobacco, and alcohol, as well as for the imaging, electronics, and magnetic product sectors

Polyolefins supplier Borealis has opened a new sales office in Mexico City to support the growing, local market for wire and cable. The company says that Mexico is currently investing in its power and communication infrastructure, boosting the wire and cable market.

Atlas Material Testing Technology (Chicago) hosted U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Sept. 18 in a discussion of the importance of trade and investment for U.S. job creation and economic growth. Atlas was chosen on the basis of its international presence, with exports to 65 countries and global operations as well. Atlas has grown exports by 12% annually on average over the last five years.

Industrial conglomerate Illinois Tool Works (ITW; Glenview, IL) has expanded its Minigrip/Zip-Pack/Space-Bag business globally, with the acquisition of Hwa Meir Packing Daily Commodities Co. Ltd., a manufacturer of storage bags based in China’s Guangdong province. Hwa Meir produces bags and containers for reduced-space, home/travel storage, and organization, with exports to North America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim.

By the end of the year, the Simonazzi, Alfa, and Gebo brands will exit the plastics lexicon as Sidel (Le Havre, France) completes its integration process of Simonazzi, which it acquired two years ago. The combined company will also create three clusters (the Americas, Asia/Pacific, and Europe/Africa/Middle East) to handle sales and service globally. Itself a division of packaging giant Tetra Laval, Sidel, world’s leading manufacturer of stretch blowmolding machinery, has 5300 employees globally.

DuPont will partner with Plantic Technologies Ltd. (Melbourne, Australia) to develop resin and sheet based on Plantic’s high-amylose corn-starch technology. Potential applications center on packaging, including cosmetics, personal care, and food packaging trays, caps, and containers. The partners will co-develop materials, with DuPont marketing and distributing Plantic’s resin and sheet as part of its Biomax family. DuPont has a stated goal of doubling revenues from non-depletable resources to $8 billion by 2015 using internal products, like its Sorona, as well as partnerships. Plantic’s technology is based on high-amylose corn starch derived from hybrid corn, with the starch imparting unique properties to film and offering biodegradability and compostability.

Global Plastics Bulletin Board

Injection molding simulation software provider Moldflow is planning a Better Injection Molding Tour through October, with stops in South Plainfield, NJ (Oct. 15), Cincinnati, OH (Oct. 16), Milwaukee, WI (Oct. 17), Houston, TX (Oct. 18), and Seattle, WA (Oct. 19). Speakers will include Moldflow’s Franco Costa, director of CAE development; Scott Grant, manager of Moldflow Plastics Labs; and Murali Annareddy, director of product marketing. The event is geared towards part designers, mold designers, moldmakers, CAE analysts, CAE analysts, and engineering managers. To register, click here.

Analysts at Margolis Polymers (Keansburg, NJ) says that global consumption of vinyl this year is estimated to be 32.7 tonnes (72 billion lb) worldwide, and the 5-year average annual global growth rate should be 4.8%. These and other results are found in a new multi-client study, “Polyvinylchloride in the 2010s” available at www.margolispolymers.com. While the building and packaging sectors account for most PVC sales, the study found that there is good growth in other rigid and flexible PVC markets including agriculture, automotive, footwear, medical, and recreational areas. “During the first seven years of the 21st century, PVC has made impressive progress on every front including sales, customer satisfaction, quality, management efficiency, process productivity, … and environmental protection,” says the report.

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