SolVin adds to PVC capacity

Vinyl joint venture SolVin (Brussels, Belgium), owned 75% by Solvay and 25% by BASF, has decided to expand its Jemeppe, Belgium PVC plant to meet increased demand in the market. Pending regulatory clearance, annual capacity will be lifted to 475,000 tonnes by 2009, up from 400,000 tonnes/yr today. SolVin claims that global vinyl growth exceeds 6%/yr and that in Eastern Europe and China, it is running at 15%/yr.

SolVin closed its Ludwigshafen, Germany plant in 2006. The joint venture has operations in France, Germany, Spain, and the Benelux countries with a total annual PVC production capacity of 1.3 million tons and nearly 2000 employees. Solvay is one of the world’s leading PVC suppliers, ranking second in Europe and third globally. In addition to SolVin in Europe, the Group’s activities in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) include its affiliates Vinylthai in Thailand and Solvay Indupa in Argentina and Brazil.

No improvement expected in recycling

Recycling remains a hot-button issue in the U.S., Europe, and China, but without government involvement little improvement over current low volumes is expected in all three regions. According to research done by two marketing communications firm firms, USA Strategies (Willowbrook, IL) and partner firm EMG of the Netherlands, there will be little increase in recycling and countries’ recycling habits will change little. USA Strategies in the U.S., and EMG in Europe and China, surveyed industry leaders to assess current levels of recycling and to predict the industry’s direction for the next five years.

The U.S., Europe, and China are continuing to have growing demand for plastic in their countries, but the ways that each of the three is dealing with this recycling issue are very different.

According to the report, the attitudes of the people in each of the three are extremely varied. Europeans tend to be more interested in recycling than those in the U.S., claims the report, while in China, consumers lack knowledge about recycling but have a general concern about their environment.

In Europe, about 21 million tons of post-consumer plastic waste is generated annually, of which just 16.5% is recycled. In the U.S., the trend is sustainability to ensure that the lifecycle of a product does not destroy the source of the product or the environment. Despite these efforts, most industry experts are expecting little or no growth in recycling trends in the U.S. due to the lack of government intervention. China is in a similar situation as the U.S.; the lack of government enforcement creates little incentive to recycle. In addition, the report says the business of recycling remains a low-profit one, creating little incentive for businesses to recycle.

RTi realigns, adds staff

Polymer consultant, Resin Technology Inc. (RTi; Fort Worth, TX) has made three hires on the basis of record growth rates over the last 24 months and realigned its business into four distinct unitsópolyethylene, polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and engineering resins. RTi offers resin buyers and processors market data and pricing information to create a purchasing strategy. On the basis of an expansion of its client base, RTi’s market intelligence has increased from 3 billion lb of real-time benchmarks in 2005 to 5 billion lb in 2007.

The four strategic business units each feature a dedicated team of experts and a global business director who is a specialist in that particular field. To support this new structure, RTi has also made a series of promotions. Mike Burns has moved from managing partner to global business director of polyethylene. Burns’ background includes more than 16 years with polymer distributor H. Muehlstein & Co., working in polyethylene. Greg Smith has been named the global business director for the engineering resins unit. Smith has worked more than 20 years within the plastics industry, including 16 years of resin sales for General Electric and Amoco. Coming to RTi after 34 years at Wellman and DuPont, Michael Dewsbury has been hired as the global business director for PET. Taking on a newly created role, Gus Garrett has been named director of business knowledge, tasked with educating and training RTi’s customer base, using more than 30 years of resin expertise. Finally, the company has hired Kevin Mitchell to act as director of marketing and Ella Benton to serve as marketing-services manager, with plans to augment the company’s marketing outreach to the broader plastics industry.

Erwes Reifenberg adds KM press for mold trials

Plastic-closure moldmaker Erwes Reifenberg GmbH & Co. KG (Finnentrop, Germany) has purchased a 140-1000 C3-AP injection molding machine from KraussMaffei (KM; Münich) for its product-development lab. The company, which has been in business for more than 30 years, produces closure systems for beverages and edible oils, offering flip tops, child-proof closures, medical closures, as well as single-handed operation, snap, and screw caps.

The C3-AP is a two-platen machine with enhanced injection and ejector functions. KM reports that the two-platen design results in a compact footprint and increased mold access. The electrically driven HPX plasticizing units operate independently from hydraulic clamp systems, allowing for concurrent movements with mold open and close and speeding cycle times. The same independent operation is true of ejection function, including closure twist out, further quickening cycles.

The Erwes Reifenberg lab has five injection molding machines, ranging in size from 22 to 250 tonnes. Used for mold trials and process optimization, the machines run all customer tools at full-production levels.

China Array opens up shop in Wuhan

High-performance thermoplastic injection molder, China Array Plastics (Pittsfield, MA), has opened a new injection molding site in Wuhan, Hubei province at the Zhuankou Industrial park to serve growing Chinese demand for domestically advanced engineering thermoplastics like polysulfone (PSU), polyetherimide (PEI), and polyetheretherketone (PEEK). The company’s target is high-end parts within niche markets of the medical, electronics, fluid-handling, and aerospace sectors. The company moved into the new 15,000-sq-ft molding facility in 2006.

China Array has former GE Plastics employees as application engineers and is intent on exploiting what it perceives as a dearth of local companies molding advanced thermoplastics versus commodity resins. Wuhan, which is the capital of Hubei province, is located on the Yangtze River and is roughly equidistant from major Chinese markets of Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. China Array is an American-based company, with the new facility called China Array Wuhan and operating as a wholly owned foreign enterprise.

The company offers moldmaking, including prototype tools, via a Cincinnati Sabre 12 machining center, an electric discharge machining system, and a Zeiss coordinate measuring machine.

New Euromap recommendations for extruders

Euromap recommendations 28, “Pipe and Profile Extrusion Lines-Electrical Interface for Line Speed Detecting Device (Measuring Wheel)” and 29, “ Pipe and Profile Extrusion Lines-Discrete Electrical Interface for Downstream Equipment after CANopen haul-off,” have been revamped in recognition of technical advances. The new recommendations are available for download at the Euromap website, www.euromap.org.

Metallocene and single-site polymers demand increases

Continued cost and performance optimization, as well as growing economies of scale, will push U.S. demand for metallocene and single-site polymers to annual growth of 18% to 5.2 billion lb in 2011, valued at $5.8 billion. That’s according to a new study by The Freedonia Group, a Cleveland-based industry research firm, which also believes that future increases could be threatened by higher costs compared to conventional materials and competition from improved Ziegler-Natta catalyst systems.

Metallocene linear low-density polyethylene (mLLDPE) will remain dominant, with more rapid growth expected for metallocene high-density polyethylene (mHDPE) and polypropylene. Film and sheet are the leading applications due to the importance of mLLDPE in packaging. Prices will moderate following the rapid increases in crude petroleum and natural gas feedstock costs between 2004 and 2006.

Metallocene and single-site polymers will account for more than 9% of all polyolefin polymers in 2011. Demand for metallocene LLDPE is projected to expand more than 15% annually to 3 billion lb in 2011. Stimulants include processing and performance advantages over conventional thermoplastics. These capabilities make mLLDPE ideally suited for the production of stretch film, trash bags, heavy-duty sacks, and flexible food packaging. Metallocene HDPE demand will increase at a more rapid pace, reflecting an expanded range of product offerings, as well as performance advantages like flexibility, high gloss, and impact and stress-crack resistance over other materials. Applications are heavily concentrated in the packaging industry, particularly for food and cosmetic/toiletry bottles.

Demand for metallocene elastomers and plastomers will increase 18% per annum to 800 million lb in 2011. Elastomers include ethylene-propylene-diene-monomer (EPDM) and thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs). These materials perform like thermoset rubber but have the processing ease of thermoplastics. Demand for mEPDM, widely used in roofing and membranes, will be fueled by new grades that offer improved processing, cleanliness, and lot-to-lot consistency. Rapid growth is also anticipated for plastomers, which are used neat or as polymer modifiers to enhance the toughness, clarity, and sealing performance of flexible packaging.

Medical device market offers processors high returns

The global medical technology market appears to be worth &euro184 billion today and growing according to estimates by the European medical technology industry association, Eucomed (Brussels, Belgium). While the North American market takes the largest share with more than 43% of the total, the European sector has 30% and Japan alone almost 20%, Eucomed says. Medical-device manufacturers in Germany, which number more than 1200, have been able to achieve 9% year-on-year sales growth thanks to hot demand in export markets. According to information from the German trade associations for medical devices and technology (ZVEI, Spectaris, and BVMed), innovative processes and products “made in Germany” are in such demand abroad that the proportion of foreign sales by the manufacturers exceeds 60%, having recently risen by almost 17%.

Graphene oxide “paper” allows conductive films

Creating sheets of graphene oxide only one atom thick, researchers at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) have developed a “paper” that can stack to more than 5 inches in diameter, with thicknesses from one to 100 microns. The mechanical, thermal, optical, and electrical properties of graphene are quite novel, according to the researchers, who published their findings in a recent journal of Nature, saying that in terms of strength and stiffness, graphene oxide paper might only be bested by a diamond. In addition to membranes with controlled permeability and use in batteries or supercapacitors, the graphene oxide paper could see use in tandem with other materials, including polymers, for super-strong, light, and highly functional composites. Embedded in films, the graphene-oxide sheets could make them electrically conductive and suitable for flexible screens or solar cells. The researchers, led by Rod Ruoff and John Evans, who are professors in Northwestern’s nanoengineering program, also believed that processing of such films might be more economical than using indium tin oxide coatings, which are currently applied in conductive films.

The paper is made by oxidizing graphite, which breaks apart in water, leaving graphene oxide sheets, which can be filtered out of the water. These sheets stack well and can be chemically linked, for macroscale materials with highly defined nanolevel structures. The material’s electrical conductivity can also be tuned, so that it can act as a conductor, semiconductor, or insulator, without any loss of mechanical properties.

Q-Cells AG increases U.S. solar energy presence

Thalheim, Germany-based Q-Cells AG announced on July 23 that it increased its stake in the American Solaria Corp. (Fremont, CA) from 12.39% to 33%. Additionally, Q-Cells concluded a cell-supply agreement for a total of up to 1.35 GWp over a 10-year period with Solaria. The agreement, which also covers close technology cooperation, is a further step for Q-Cells AG in the course of the internationalization of the company.

Q-Cells was founded in 1999, and today is the second-largest manufacturer of solar cells in the world, using polycrystalline and monocrystalline materials. Solaris Corp. develops innovative cell and module technologies. Based on an extensive IP portfolio, Solaria’s technology combines concentration with cell singulation to achieve increased power output while contributing to further price reduction within photovoltaics.

Solaria’s technology is aimed at reducing the cost of panels while allowing them to be as efficient as traditional ones. The company uses plastic lenses to concentrate sunlight on a specially treated cell that uses far less silicon, a material that makes traditional solar panels more expensive.

Anton Milner, Q-Cells’s CEO, states in a press release, “We are excited by this investment and the progress at Solaria, [which] has a high synergetic potential to deliver important cost savings to the current mainstream solar-cell applications.”

Global closure market opens up

Accelerating economic growth and rising personal incomes will support development of consumer nondurable goods markets, especially in the world’s emerging economies, with closures and other packaging materials among the primary beneficiaries. Global demand for caps and closures is forecast to expand 4.7% per year through 2011 to $32 billion, representing 1.4 trillion units. This is according to a new study released from The Freedonia Group, a Cleveland-based industry market research firm.

Unit gains will continue to be driven by the penetration of closure-intensive plastic packaging at the expense of traditionally closureless packaging media such as gabletop and aseptic drink cartons and plastic pouches. Limiting growth will be heightened competition from packaging formats that do not use closures, such as blister packs and stand-up pounces. Sales revenues will be fueled by a shift in the product mix in favor of value-added closure types that provide increased product safety, user convenience, and/or shelf appeal. Examples include tamper-evident, child-resistant, and dispensing types.

Above-average gains are expected in the world’s emerging markets, especially those in Asia. China will lead, accounting for more than one-fourth of projected unit gains in global cap and closure demand through 2011. However, due to relatively low prices, it will account for only 16% of value gains. India will also perform strongly. The U.S., which accounts for almost one-fourth of global cap and closure value demand, also enjoys generally favorable prospects (fueled by a continued shift in the product mix toward value-added configurations). Western Europe and Japan will see slower growth hindered by mature markets and stagnant population growth.

Plastic closures will continue to supplant traditional metal and (increasingly) cork types, supported by technological advances and the ongoing shift from glass to plastic and paperboard in consumer packaging applications such as soft drinks and pharmaceuticals. In the beverage sector, strongest gains are expected in the bottled-water segment, with nontraditional products such as sports drinks and flavored milk also performing favorably. Healthy growth is also anticipated in consumer chemical markets such as cosmetics, toiletries, and household cleaners, which are enjoying rapid growth and becoming more intensive users of packaging in the developing world.

GW Plastics triples size of China plant

Less than a year after opening a moldmaking and processing/assembly facility in Dongguan, China, contract molder GW Plastics (Bethel, VT) reports it has tripled the facility’s size. GW has invested $1.7 million on its operations in China. The current expansion increases the facility’s size to more than 40,000 sq ft (3700 sq m).

Investments have included CAD workstations and assorted metalworking machinery for moldmaking as well as construction of a class 100,000 (Class 8) cleanroom molding and assembly area. The facility also houses tiebarless and electric molding machines, from Engel and Fanuc Roboshot, to mold parts for its customers in the automotive, healthcare, telecommunications, and office machine markets. GW Plastics’ other facilities are in Bethel, VT; Royalton, VT; San Antonio, TX; Tucson, AZ; and Queretaro, Mexico.

Palram opens corrugated PC plant in Pennsylvania

A new processing facility in Kutztown, PA, for Palram, the largest manufacturer of corrugated polycarbonate products in the world and the third largest global consumer of polycarbonate, has created 50 new manufacturing jobs, bringing the total number of employees at the location to 210.

Palram opened its facility in Kutztown in 2001 and expanded operations there in 2004 and 2006. The new 92,000-sq-ft facility will house equipment used to extrude PVC corrugated, flat, and foamed products for the industrial, commercial, and residential sectors. The facility also will process Palight Trimboard, a PVC-based alternative to wood.

Stratasys books for six FDM Titans

An unidentified Fortune 500 firm has ordered six FDM Titan direct digital manufacturing systems from manufacturer Stratasys (Minneapolis, MN). Stratasys says this is its largest order ever for these large rapid manufacturing/prototyping systems, and doubles the number already at the customer.

Patrick Robb, FDM product manager, said, “Fortune 500 companies don’t make this kind of investment unless they are serious about capitalizing on the opportunities for DDM. Some of the benefits of DDM include reduced or eliminated tooling costs, no waiting time for tooling, and a more cost-efficient process when production runs are small.” In a 2006 survey, 42% of Stratasys machine owners said they use their additive fabrication or rapid prototyping system for at least some manufacturing of end-use parts.

Names in the News

Anthony Cavanna, CEO and founding partner of composite lumber manufacturer, Trex Co. Inc. (Winchester, VA) will retire effective August 15, 2007, with current president and COO, Andrew Ferrari, stepping up as the new CEO. Cavanna, who along with Ferrari and two other partners founded Trex in 1996, will stay on as chairman of the board.

John Barth will retire from Tier One automotive supplier Johnson Controls (Milwaukee, WI) after 38 years, spending the last five as CEO. Stephen Roell, current executive VP and vice chairman, has been voted to replace Barth and elected as chairman of Johnson Control’s board of directors. Barth will stay on as a member of the board. Roell, who has been with the supplier for 25 years, becomes Johnson Control’s eighth CEO in its 123-year history. During Barth’s tenure from 2002 to 2007, the company’s net sales rose from $20 billion to an estimated $34.5 billion. Over the same time period, the number of employees, countries, and locations rose from 111,000; 41; and 628, to 140,000; 75; and 1300 respectively.

Blowmolding machine manufacturer Uniloy Milacron (Tecumseh, MI) has added Wallace Willard as East Coast territory manager for its aftermarket team in North America. In this new position Willard will have responsibility for aftermarket molds, parts, and services.

Willard’s 24 years of blowmolding experience include time at Liquitane (Batavia, NY) as plant manager and most recently with Consolidated Container Corp. as technical resource manager. He will be serving processors in the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia as well as New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec, and the metropolitan Toronto area in Canada, plus Haiti.

Additives and polymer producer PolyOne (Cleveland, OH) says that Debra Light has joined the company as senior marketing manager for the vinyl compounds business and that Richelle Rhoden has been named marketing analyst for the same division. Light previously served as marketing manager for lubricant additives at The Lubrizol Corp. Rhoden was previously a sales rep in PolyOne Distribution’s southeast district.

Bodo Cordes, managing director of processor Wentus Kunststoff (Höxter, Germany), part of the Clondalkin group (Dublin, Ireland), has been named new director of the flexographic printed polyolefin film sector of the German plastics packaging association IK (Bad Homburg).

Reelected for a further two-year term as president of the European Plastic Films (EuPF) association (Brussels, Belgium) is Bjˆrn Hoem, CEO of Cedo Folien (Mˆnchengladbach, Germany).

Rudi Smit has been named project manager at pipe-extrusion equipment maker Rollepaal (Dedemsvaart, Netherlands). He replaces Gerard Boschman who held the post for more than six years and has left the company.

The new president of Autovinyle, the French association of automotive vendors supplying PVC products, is René Maillot, group president of the vinyl compounds business unit at polymer producer Arkema (Paris).

Wood/plastic (or alternative fiber) composite (WPC) compounder and profile extruder, JER Envirotech Intl. Corp. (Vancouver, BC), announced the appointments of a number of executives, including Ji Yoon as CFO; Peter Kelly as CTO; Peter Baran as COO; William Hunnicutt as VP global sales and marketing; and William Anderson as VP manufacturing. The five new executives join Edward Trueman, president and CEO of JER since December 2006. The firm has WPC manufacturing operations in Canada and Malaysia, and is currently in the process of establishing new plants in the Philippines and India.

Former apprentice Johannes Lutz (Rodalben, Germany) has won top prize and €1500 in this year’s German Plastics Processors’ Assn. (GKV, Frankfurt) seventh annual competition honoring the best trainees for the processing sector. Lutz, who completed his training with window profile extruder Profine (Pirmasens, Germany), scored a 97 out of a possible 100 points in the competition. Second place (€1000) was Andreas Greyer, with only one point less, who completed his training with pipe processor Rehau AG+Co. (Rehau, Germany) and Christina Wei? from Günter Weippert Kunststofftechnik (÷hringen, Germany) who took third place (€500).

Sarah Plant joins the British Plastics Federation (London) as industrial issues executive-raw materials. She is also in charge of product safety and fire issues for the federation. Tim Marsden, formerly with Fisher Clinical Services, becomes industrial issues executive-construction and is responsible for the association’s vinyl, windows, and cellular PVC groups. Kevin Longworth, formerly with Hunter Plastics, becomes the federation’s new industrial projects executive to coordinate work on innovation and third-party funding of collaborative projects.

Briefs

Injection moldmaker and manufacturer of inmold and other automation systems for thermoforming, Mould & Matic (Micheldorf, Austria), has relocated production of thin-wall injection molds to its facility in Sluöovice, Czech Republic. “In our Micheldorf based headquarter we refocus ourselves on molds for medical technologies”, reports CEO Erwin Altendorfer. The company has a staff of about 150, with 100 of them at the headquarters in Micheldorf. Total turnover in 2006 was €12.5 million.

After looking for an individual or company to take over and privatize Turkey’s polymer producer Petrokimya Holding known as Petkim (Aliaga) since 2003, the government has finally be able to sell 51% of the previously state-owned company to a Kazakhstan-Russian consortium called Transcentral Asia Petrochemical for an estimated $2.05 billion. This little known consortium beat out a bid by SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, Baku, Azerbaijan) and its partner Turcas Petrol (Istanbul). Regulatory authorities in the country still need to give the sale their blessing.

German canoe, kayak, and rowing crews, Team Kunststoff, sponsored by national sector of PlasticsEurope (Frankfurt), the polymer producers’ association, recently booked three top wins and three second places in international competitions. They also took the World Cup in four different disciplines.

Fraunhofer Institute for Application Center for Processing Machinery and Packaging Technology (AVV, Dresden, Germany) has opened a new service center (SCUS) to aid packaging processors and converters needing product and packaging testing (www.scus.de).

CDF Corp. (Plymouth, MA), a thermoformer of liners for industrial containers, has signed a contract to implement IFS Applications 7 enterprise resource planning (ERP) business software, at its headquarters and processing facilities in Plymouth, MA. Corning Data Services, a Corning, NY-based partner of software developer IFS (Schaumburg, IL), will install the software for CDF.

Pipe processor Uponor (Vantaa, Finland) has won two British awards for its polyethylene-recycling SUPER (Systems for Uponor PolyEthylene Recycling) scheme. The Green Organization presented the company with a ëGreen Apple for Environmental Best Practice’ award and Uponor took an Environment Business Outstanding Achievement trophy at the Sustainable City Awards held by the City of London Corp.

Additive and filler producer Süd-Chemie (Münich, Germany) recently celebrated its 150th anniversary with a ceremony in the Nymphenburg Palace in Münich. Keynote speakers included Michael Glos, German federal minister of economics and technology, and Wolfgang A. Hermann, president of the city’s Technical University.

RNR Plastics (Raynham, MA) has introduced self-adhesive retail electronic article surveillance (EAS) security labels for use with Sensormatic-brand hard dye tag protection systems to prevent customer price tag switching from low- to high-value items. The rigid PVC labels feature a clear adhesive and cannot be separated from the hard dye tag.

Germany’s Masterbatch Verband (Frankfurt) masterbatchers’ lobby is seriously concerned for the financial security of its members due to increasing raw material prices, shortage of material on the market, and delivery bottlenecks. Masterbatch association spokesperson Heike Liewald says, depending on polymer, the prices in the last six months have risen between 6%-20%. The most processed-resin, polyethylene, has seen increases of more than 15%. She says pigments and dyes, in particular metal-based pigments, have also seen double-digit price increases in the last six months.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) wine bottles, using Constar barrier technology and molded by Amcor PET Packaging, are being trialed by English grocer Sainsbury to package a sauvignon blanc and a rosÈ, with the plastics-based container weighing 54g versus 400g for glass. That lighter weight could reduce carbon emissions used to transport wine. On the basis of the ? million tonnes of glass used for wine on an annual basis in England, switching to PET could reduce carbon emissions by 90,000 tonnes. The PET bottles are also filled on site, eliminating the bulk transportation of wine. Sainsbury has a stated goal of reducing corporate carbon dioxide emissions 25% by 2012.

Counting 514 new materials and 6550 updates to existing lines, online plastics database IDES Inc. (Laramie, WY) now has processing and property information for more than 68,000 materials from 600 global manufacturers. The company reports that more than 120,000 plastics professionals use its online search engine, Prospector, to gather data about polymers. Recent updates come from an assortment of polymer manufacturers, including DSM, Rhodia, BASF, Basell, Degussa, Ineos, and Bayer.