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Bekum agent Hamilton becomes insolvent May 30, 2005
One of Britain's oldest machinery sales agencies has been forced into insolvency. Hamilton Machinery Sales has been in business for more than 40 years, most notably as UK agent for Bekum blow moulding machines. Its collapse is reported as having been caused by its pension scheme liabilities.
Aside from rising pension liabilities, Hamilton has had to operate in a declining market, that of blow moulding machinery. The company also represented Dieffenbacher's compression presses and Plastmachines recycling equipment, and in recent years has added sales of ancillary equipment. But with some of this ancillary equipment also dedicated to blow moulding, Hamilton has become another casualty in what some are seeing as a saturated market with secondhand equipment from failed moulding companies blocking sales of new machines.
Joint venture to develop light emitting plastics May 30, 2005
Light emitting plastic developer Cambridge Display Technology is to become further involved with Sumitomo Chemicals of Japan, which also makes light emitting plastics. Sumitomo has been a CDT licensee and has invested in the company since 2001. Now the two companies are planning to set up a 50:50 joint venture company to develop and supply polymer organic light emitting diode (P-OLED) materials and inks for commercial display and lighting applications.
The new company will be based in Tokyo and will firm up development relationships spanning the past few years. Sumitomo has recently bought the Lumation business from The Dow Chemical Company, and will put the Lumation fluorene polymer technology into the joint venture. Polyfluorenes are reckoned to be the best-performing full colour P-OLED materials and have been developed separately by CDT and Dow over the last ten years. The new company will also have exclusive access to high efficiency materials based on dendrimer chemistry which CDT gained through the acquisition of Opsys in 2002. Sumitomo and CDT have been working together since 2003 on the dendrimer class of materials.
The new company will make and sell Sumitomo's existing range of P-OLED materials, and will bring CDT into actual materials supply for the first time.
Lanxess increases Nd-PBR capacity and plans new Chinese engineering plastics compounding line May 30, 2005
Lanxess has completed the first step of a multi-stage expansion of its capacity for neodymium polybutadiene rubber - Nd-PBR. Plants in Port Jérême, France, and Orange, USA, have been modified to enable production of multiple grades including Nd-catalyzed PBR as well as lithium-PBR and solution styrene butadiene rubber SSBR on the same line. In the second and third stage of the project more lines will be modified to make Nd-PBR and give increased flexibility to produce Buna VSL (SSBR).
Nd-PBR and SSBR are used in high-performance tyre production, but have other applications in impact modification for polystyrene, and in shoe soles and golf balls.
Lanxess has also set a start-up date for a nylon and PBT/PET compounding plant in China. The plant, at the Wuxi Chemicals leather chemicals site near Shanghai, will produce 20,000 tonnes annually of Durethan and Pocan from the first quarter of next year. Its output will bring local production to a market for engineering plastics which Lanxess says in growing 8 per cent annually in Asia overall and 13 per cent in China. Currently Durethan and Pocan compounds for the Asian market are supplied directly from the German plant in Krefeld-Uerdingen.
More fluoroelastomer to meet rising demand May 30, 2005
A 50 per cent increase is planned by Asahi Glass in production of its Aflas fluoroelastomer, which is used mainly for covering materials for electric cables and automotive parts. The expansion is in response to forecast global growth in fluoroelastomer demand of around 10 per cent annually. Construction at Asahi's Chiba plant in Japan is scheduled to start in March next year.
New GTMA president May 30, 2005
Dr Tony Steels is the new president of the Gauge and Toolmakers Association, taking over from Roger Onions. He has been a GTMA Board member since March 2003 and serves a two-year term as president.
Engel invests to support future growth May 30, 2005
Engel is planning major investments in its injection machine plants in Europe and Asia, despite short term pragmatism about the level of business. Work on a new technology and training centre is about to begin in Schwertberg, Austria, and the preparatory work has already begun for the building of Engel's first Asian factory for large capacity machines in Shanghai. The factory will go into production around the middle of 2006. A new sales and service branch is also being built in Warsaw in order to handle the rapidly growing Polish market.
The company's machine sales in 2004/5 were up 8·8 per cent at Eur 586·3 million - more if the weakness of the US dollar against the Euro is disregarded - and the company sold around 3,000 machines compared with 2,700 in 2003/4.
Orders 'dropped considerably' in the first quarter of the current year compared with the last quarter of the previous year, but the company is aiming to achieve at least the same level of sales for this year as last. Sales growth is expected in the new EU countries, America and Asia compared with weakness in Western Europe where there is reluctance by plastics processors to invest in new machines, says Engel.
Continuous polymerisation aids HTN production May 30, 2005
Capacity for DuPont's Zytel HTN high temperature nylons has been improved with the start up of the company's first HTN continuous polymerisation plant in Richmond, Virginia, USA.
PolyOne has expanded its position in PVC compounds with the acquisition of Novatec Plastics Corporation, a compounding business owned by PVC Container Corporation in the USA. The purchase consists of Novatec's equipment, compounding recipes and customer list. Production will be transferred to PolyOne plants over the next few months, after which the Novatec plant will close. PolyOne and PVC Container Corporation have entered into discussions for PolyOne to become a supplier of vinyl packaging compounds to PVC Container Corp.
BP and Nova formalise European styrenics merger May 30, 2005
The merger between the European styrenics businesses of BP and Nova Chemicals has now been formalised. The joint venture will be named Nova Innovene - Innovene to reflect the new name for BP's olefins and derivatives business.
Martin Pugh, currently vice president and managing director for Nova Chemicals in Europe, will be managing director and Chris de la Camp, currently controller of the Innovene styrenics business, will be finance director.
Innovene and Nova Chemicals expect to begin operations of the joint venture in the autumn.
The planned restructure of Arkema's PVC business has run into total opposition from the trades unions. Job protection measures and voluntary redundancy plans have been improved since the original proposal, but Works Council Committee members have rejected them unanimously.
Optical waveguide material is easier to process May 30, 2005
An epoxy material for use in flexible optical waveguides has been developed by Nitto Denko in Japan. The photo-sensitive epoxy is highly transparent in the near-infrared range, and flexible, so that optical circuits can be created by patterning using ultra-violet exposure, replacing the conventional dry-etching processes.
Embedded optical waveguides can be created using the material. The light-transmitting part (the core) is flat with a rectangular cross-section. The cladding on the core can also be embedded, allowing construction of a 100 micron film on the substrate. Nitto Denko says the optical characteristics of the material are excellent, leading to low 0·1 dB/cm losses over the 0·7 - 1·0 micron range.
Manufacturing is said to be easier because optical waveguide patterns can be created using a simple ultraviolet exposure and developing process instead of the conventional dry-etching process. The material is also expected to be used for optical interconnection between substrates and chips, and for optical waveguides between parts inside electronic equipment of several mm to tens of cm.
More Asian acrylic from Sumitomo May 30, 2005
Sumitomo Chemical is increasing its capacity in Asia for MMA and PMMA by building two plants in Singapore. An MMA monomer plant, the company's third in Singapore, will have an annual capacity of 90,000 tonnes while the company's second PMMA plant in Singapore will have a capacity of 50,000 tonnes. The two facilities will be fully operational in the first quarter of 2008. Sumitomo's Asian capacity will then be 413,000 tonnes of MMA and 244,000 tonnes of PMMA.
British bottle maker to make cables in India
May 12, 2005
Lincoln-based pharmaceutical container and bottle manufacturer Krystals has opened a cable plant in India. Krystals Cables India in New Delhi will make PVC-covered cables for applications such as domestic lighting, switchgear and control panels; multi-core fine stranded cabling for conveyor systems and a variety of control applications and multi-pair telephone cables used in telecommunications. In addition the company will manufacture audio and video cabling for Bose and other companies.
Initially Krystals India will supply the domestic market but later Krystals plans to export cabling from India to Europe and will be using its distribution, sales and administration facilities in the UK.
Bayer's Makrolon capacity to pass 1 million tonnes this year May 12, 2005
Bayer is adding more capacity for its Makrolon polycarbonate and bringing forward production in China.
The company increased capacity in 2004 and at the beginning of this year by 60,000 tonnes and will bring a further 60,000 tonnes on stream by the end of the year, taking its worldwide capacity to more than 1 million tonnes. This will be across four plants - Baytown, USA (260,000); Antwerp, Belgium (240,000); Uerdingen, Germany (330,000); and Map Ta Phut, Thailand (220,000).
Bayer is also building a Makrolon plant at Caojing, near Shanghai in China. The first 100,000 tonnes of capacity is expected to come on stream there at the start of next year, and the full 200,000 tonnes capacity scheduled for 2009 is now expected to be reached during 2007.
Also at Caojing, Bayer expects to start up a 40,000 tonnes compounding line for polycarbonate and polycarbonate blends during this year.
Bayer is forecasting global annual growth in polycarbonate demand of 8 - 10 per cent in the next few years.
Solvay to sell flexible films business May 12, 2005
Solvay is planning to sell its non-core Industrial Foils flexible films business to international films specialist Renolit for Eur 330 million. It sold its rigid sheet business to Ineos in January.
The Industrial Foils business operates mainly in Europe with nine plants in eight countries, but there is also a plant in the USA and two joint ventures in China and Brazil. Its products go into applications such as medical disposables, swimming pools, furniture, construction, stationery, automotive and consumer goods. Turnover in 2004 was around Eur 470 million with 2,200 employees.
Renolit is a family-run business with a workforce of 2,300 at its 16 subsidiaries.
Milacron delivers first Chinese-built injection machine May 12, 2005
Milacron's Chinese joint venture with Jiangnan Mould & Plastic Technology Co has delivered its first Chinese-built injection moulding machine - the first of a number ordered by Jiangnan for delivery this year. The 1,000 tonne Maxima two-platen machine is identical to models built in North America and Germany, while having a significant portion of Chinese domestic content. Despite 90 per cent of the Chinese market being focused on machines under 500 tonnes, Milacron is pitching at bigger machines up to 4,000 tonnes, for which it says there is a rapidly evolving market driven by international companies, particularly car makers and their suppliers who are setting up or expanding manufacturing in China.
Milacron says it has no intention of exporting machines from China - with the exception possibly of sales to some countries around the Pacific rim - but as the Chinese factory is building machines to a global design, there could be 'opportunities for strategic part sourcing from China'.
Jiangnan Mould & Plastic Technology Co moulds for the automotive market, and while the first Maxima was being built, took delivery of two US-built Maximas for its Shanghai plant.
Solvay to increase fluoropolymer output May 12, 2005
Double digit sales growth for its fluoropolymers has triggered two major capacity expansions at the Solvay Solexis plant at Spinetta Marengo in Italy. The increase in production of Algoflon fine PTFE powders and Hyflon PFA/MFA is scheduled to be on-line in 2007.
Acrylic block copolymers improve properties of composites May 12, 2005
Arkema has developed a range of acrylic block copolymers which can be compounded with epoxies to improve mechanical properties. As their name suggests these Nanostrength materials take advantage of the different physics operating at the nano scale to mix with the host polymers in a way not previously achievable in composites materials.
The two types of Nanostrength materials are SBM, a polystyrene-block-poly(1,4-Butadiene)-block-poly(methylmethacrylate), and MMA, poly(methylmethacrylate)-block-poly(butylacrylate)-block-poly(methylmethacrylate).
Arkema anticipates applications in virtually all spheres of composites production.
Basell sold after US government warns against the Iranians May 10, 2005
The conjecture of a month ago that US government pressures may complicate a deal for the National Petroleum Corporation of Iran to buy Basell have been proven correct, and Basell has been sold to a US-based consortium with major interests in India. The successful bid was Eur 4·4 billion, apparently less than that offered by NPC which claimed to have won the tender. Reuters news agency reported that a US State Department official had said that the department had expressed to BASF and Shell its concerns over the potential misuse of Basell technology and the fact that, under the US sanctions regime, US companies would not be able to deal with Basell if Iran took it over.
Basell's new owners are Access Industries, a privately held industrial holding company with investments worldwide in the oil, aluminium, coal and telecommunications sectors, and The Chatterjee Group, a privately held US-based investment organisation which has a controlling interest in Haldia Petrochemicals, a major integrated petrochemical company in India that uses Basell technology.
Basell was set up in 2000 to combine BASF's and Shell's polyolefin businesses of Elenac, Montell and Targor. It currently has sales activities in more than 120 countries and operates production sites in 21 countries with a workforce of 6,600 employees: about 5,200 in Europe and about 1,000 in North America. It is the world's largest producer of polypropylene and advanced polyolefins, and is a leading supplier of polyethylene and catalysts. In 2004, Basell posted sales of Eur 6·7 billion.
The two partners are selling up to finance future development - BASF to concentrate on its styrenics, performance polymers and polyurethanes and Shell as part of a $15 billion fund raiser for further investment in its core oil and gas businesses.
The deal is expected to be finalised in the second half of this year, following any regulatory permissions.
BASF bows out of US PS production... May 10, 2005
Rationalisation and restructuring has also led BASF to sell its North American polystyrene business to Ineos Americas. The company retains a major presence in the North American styrenics market, but says the Joliet site in Illinois is no longer consistent with its site integration strategy. Joliet, which BASF bought from Mobil Chemical in 1992, has a 380,000 tonnes GP/HIPS plant. BASF is the second biggest supplier of polystyrene in the world, but was only the fourth largest producer in the USA and Canada.
...and expands biodegradables in its styrenics division May 10, 2005
BASF is planning to nearly double capacity for its biodegradable copolyester Ecoflex. It is to build a 6,000 tonnes plant at Schwarzeheide in Germany for a 2006 start-up and already has an 8,000 tonnes plant in Ludwigshafen.
Ecoflex, part of BASF's Styrene Plastics division, is used mainly in blends with renewable raw materials such as starch, cellulose or polylactic acid in shopping bags, bags for organic garbage, mulching film for agriculture and various types of food packaging.
BASF notes that following the amendment to the German packaging ordinance, all packaging that is biodegradable according to DIN EN 13432 will be exempt until 2012 from the DSD (Duales System Deutschland) recycling fee.
MBO at bonded rubber component firm May 10, 2005
Rubber/metal bonding specialist Ferrabyrne of Littlehampton has been bought by its management team for £3 million. Ferrabyrne was formed in 1974 by the merger of Ferring Rubber & Plastics with Byrne Moulding & Engineering, and is now a £6 million turnover business with a 60-strong workforce. The company makes bonded rubber components for the rail and road transportation, wind turbine and electrical industries. Key clients include Bombardier in the UK, Germany and France, Alstom, Wabtec Rail, Hendrickson, and the London Underground.
The management buy-out team was led by new managing director Glenn Mills and supported by Ken Horton, Hans Christian Iverson and previous owners Andrew Byrne and Robert Slatter. Mr Byrne and Mr Slatter have retired from the business but will remain with the company on a consultancy basis.
Growth into new premises for composites manufacturer May 10, 2005
Imhotep, which makes thermoplastic composite profiles and prepregs, has moved to a larger unit in the Sherwood Energy Village on the former colliery site in Ollerton, Nottinghamshire. Alongside the move the company has invested in a new high-temperature production facility enabling the use of high performance plastics such as PEEK and PPS with continuous carbon, aramid or glass fibres. A new range of coated thermoplastic composite profiles and prepregs is now in development.
The expansion has been financed by investment from a consortium of private investors and a venture fund and a grant from the Environmental Industries Forum for Imhotep's technology to recycle plastic composite profiles.
The move has also brought a new testing facility to give customers quantified data on the performance of the company's profiles and prepregs which has enabled Imhotep to introduce improved process and quality control procedures.
Victrex secures raw material for PEEK May 10, 2005
Victrex has taken tighter control over the key raw material from which it makes its PEEK polyaryletherketone with the purchase of a plant at Seal Sands on Teesside from Degussa for £16·3 million.
In 1999 Victrex set up a joint venture with Laporte to make BDF from DFDPM made by Victrex from fluorobic acid bought from Laporte. Now it has bought from Degussa (which bought Laporte in 2001) the oxidation plant at Seal Sands which carries out the secondary stage of BDF manufacture and the remainder of the assets - principally the fluoroboric acid plant - adjacent to its existing site at Rotherham where the primary manufacturing stage of BDF is conducted.
Polyolefin plant plans May 10, 2005
New plants for 1,330,000 tonnes of polypropylene and 620,000 tonnes of polyethylene are to be built using technologies from Basell and Dow.
The new PP plants are a 180,000 tonnes plant for Titan in Russia, a 250,000 tonnes plant for Samsung Total in Korea, and a 400 and 500,000 tonne plants for an unidentified 'global leader' in petrochemicals. The PE plants are for Sabic, one at 400,000 tonnes in Saudi Arabia and the other at 220,000 tonnes in Europe.
The new plants for Titan and Samsung will both use Basell technology. The Titan plant, to be built at Omsk, West Siberia in Russia for a 2007 start-up, will be based on the Spheripol process which has been used in Russia for several years - it is the ninth license overall granted by Basell in Russia representing a combined annual capacity of 1·6 million tonnes of polypropylene and polyethylene.
Samsung Total Petrochemicals Company will be using Basell's Spherizone technology for its new 250,000 tonnes PP plant to be built at Daesan, Korea due to start-up at the end of 2007. This will be the first Spherizone license in Asia and the fifth worldwide.
Spherizone is Basell's newest polypropylene technology designed around the company's patented multi-zone circulating reactor system which can produce bi-modal products in a single reactor. Basell began licensing the technology in 2003.
In addition to the new Spherizone plant, Samsung Total plans to expand its cracker, build a metathesis unit and increase styrene capacity at the Daesan site.
The two anonymous high capacity PP plants will run the Dow Unipol process. The 500,000 tonnes plant will produce homopolymers and random copolymers and is described as 'the largest single-train polypropylene plant in the world'.
The Unipol PP process became available in 1985 and since then has been licensed for use in more than 80 plants in 15 countries, accounting for more than 6 million tonnes of PP.
SABIC's new HDPE plants will be based on Basell's Hostalen technology. The 400,000 tonnes plant, to be built by SABIC's affiliate, Yanbu National Petrochemical Company, will be part of a new petrochemical complex in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia and is planned to start up in 2007. The other plant, to be built by Sabic Europe at one of its European sites, will start up in 2008.
The license agreement includes an option for SABIC to enter into an additional five license agreements to build Hostalen process plants. The Hostalen process is a dual reactor, low-pressure slurry technology for the production of HDPE. The two reactors can be operated in parallel or in series to customize product properties, especially for bimodal HDPE.
Basell PE in short supply because of plant downtime May 10, 2005
Basell has taken its 250,000 tonnes HDPE plant in Wesseling, Germany, out of service for maintenance. It is expected to be down for around 10 days. The company expects to be in short supply of some of its medium density PE grades during this period.
Deceuninck to shut Oldham extrusion plant May 10, 2005
Belgium-based PVC window systems producer Deceuninck is to close its Status Systems plant in Delph near Oldham because of falling demand in the British and German markets. Elsewhere, notably in Spain and Central and South Eastern Europe, the group's sales have grown substantially, but in Germany and Britain Deceuninck has recorded a first quarter sales decline 'which cannot simply be explained by seasonal factors.' A year ago Deceuninck reported a 15 per cent year on year first quarter sales increase of 15 per cent in the UK against a background of overall market decline.
Status Systems is to be integrated with Deceuninck UK under the name Deceuninck Status. Manufacturing at the Delph plant will be transferred to other European sites with the loss of around 80 jobs. Production of window profiles and non-window Deeplas foamed profiles will continue at the Calne site in Wiltshire, and the distribution centre at Royton, near Oldham, will also remain open.
The combined companies expect a turnover in excess of £50 million during 2005.
Two plastics design and manufacturing competitions run by the Worshipful Company of Horners are now seeking entries.
The 2005 Horners Bottlemaking Award is open to UK designers and manufacturers of bottles, and will be awarded to the bottle manufacturer. An entry must be either a plastics bottle, jar, or hollow container with closure (where applicable) not exceeding 20 litres in capacity and made by any process including extrusion blow, injection blow, injection stretch blow, injection moulding, rotational moulding and vacuum forming.
The entry should be a new concept, innovative, of pleasing or practical design and with a likely or proven commercial application or potential. It must be developed, manufactured or sold in the United Kingdom.
The Bottlemaking Award is now in its third year. Much longer in the tooth - it was established in 1945 - is the Horners Award for Plastics which promotes outstanding design in plastics and major advances in plastics manufacturing processes which have proven records of commercial success.
Entries for the Bottlemaking Award should be received by June 30. The deadline for Horners Award entries is August 8.
A technology to make three-dimensional data storage discs is under development in the USA, and Bayer MaterialScience has signed up to share in the development. Conventional CD and DVD discs write and read data with a laser beam reflected from the disc's surface. The new technology aims to store data through the whole mass of the disc, giving a disc the capacity of 50 times that of a DVD or 460 times that of a CD - with even more mind blowing storage capacities on the horizon.
The technology is known as holographic data storage. With this the laser beam is divided into a signal beam and a reference beam. The signal beam conveys the data and is combined in the polymer storage medium with the reference beam. This results in a complex three-dimensional interference pattern that is stored three-dimensionally in the polymer. Within the polymer system the interference pattern produces local changes in the material's
refractive index. It is these tiny changes that make it possible for a laser to read the information.
Bayer's partner in the development is InPhase Technologies, which was formed at the end of 2000 from Lucent Technologies and Bell Labs, and reckons to be the technology leader in holographic storage media. Bayer is investing $5 million in the company and has acquired a license to use the research results from the cooperation and InPhase's holography know-how for applications beyond the field of optical storage.
Both companies expect to have tangible results from their cooperation fairly soon, with InPhase launching a holographic data storage medium based on products from Bayer MaterialScience and a recording and reading device with a capacity of 300 Gigabytes in 2006. InPhase is aiming introduce write-once discs for professional archiving which will be followed by re-writable discs and products for the mass market, such as handheld entertainment devices.
The research cooperation will seek to develop speciality polymers to produce discs with a capacity of up to 1·6 terabytes - equal to 780 million A4 pages of text, or the contents of a library with around four million books. In entertainment terms a disc of this kind could accommodate 1·6 million high-resolution photographs, 10 days and 10 nights of continuous video, or 18 months of continuous music.
Bayer's vision outside data storage is for applications such as in lighting and optics, where holographic materials might be used in displays and sensors in car interiors, projection surfaces and signal lights.
Its Makrolon polycarbonate is already used in volume holographic applications such as transparent projection screens in shop windows, trade fairs or airports to give razor-sharp, brilliantly coloured projections.
Bakelite goes to Borden as it bids to become world's biggest in thermosets May 10, 2005
Borden Chemical of the USA has bought Bakelite from Rutgers in Germany as part of a bid to form the world's largest producer of thermosets. Borden plans to merge with Resolution Performance Products and Resolution Specialty Materials with the new combined company becoming Hexion Specialty Chemicals. The Bakelite acquisition gives the company a strong presence in Europe - Bakelite has 13 manufacturing operations in Germany, Finland, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic and Korea - additional phenolic resin technology and products, and a new technology platform in epoxy resins.
Including Bakelite, Borden Chemical now has 61 plants throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia and the merger with the Resolution companies will push this number up to 86.
JV buy-out gives Degussa more acrylics presence in the Americas May 10, 2005
Degussa is to buy out its partner, Cytec, in the US acrylics business Cyro and to merge Cyro with its own activities in the Americas. Cyro Industries was set up by Degussa and Cytec in 1976 and has four plants making Acrylite acrylic sheet and polymer products and methyl methacrylate. Sales in 2004 were $317 million. Degussa is paying $95 million. Cyro's sales organisation will give Degussa a platform to supply the North and South American markets with its speciality products such as anti-graffiti sheet and sound barrier systems.
Davis-Standard hived off into joint venture by Crompton May 10, 2005
Davis-Standard, the American extrusion equipment manufacturer owned by chemicals giant Crompton Corporation, is to be teamed up with the Black Clawson film equipment company. Davis-Standard has long been regarded as an odd-ball within the Crompton portfolio and Crompton has tried to sell it. Black Clawson Converting Machinery was bought out of the Black Clawson company by its management in 2003 financed by US investment group Hamilton Robinson.
Now Crompton and Hamilton Robinson have formed a joint venture - called Davis-Standard - with Crompton as the majority shareholder to combine both businesses.
Davis-Standard builds rubber and plastics extrusion equipment and industrial blow moulding machines. Its 2004 revenues were around $180 million. The business employs approximately 660 people at plants in the USA, Germany and Britain, most of whom will join the new company.
Black Clawson Converting Machinery builds equipment for the flexible web converting and plastics processing industries. Product lines include equipment for extrusion coating and laminating, cast film production, liquid coating and laminating, unwinding and winding and pelletizing. It has a plant in New York State with around 150 employees, most of whom will also become D-S employees.
New technology head for Battenfeld injection moulding May 10, 2005
Dr Dietrich Hunold has joined Battenfeld Injection Molding as managing director, technology. He moves from Krauss-Maffei's injection moulding department where he was head of the product management department.
Clariant names exit date for Watford May 10, 2005
Clariant UK is finally to leave the former Mercury Plastics masterbatch site in Watford on July 1 when it centralises all its masterbatch distribution and administration in Wigan. The company has been running down the Watford site for the past year as part of an efficiency programme to focus on Wigan.
...and expands in Taiwan May 10, 2005
Clariant has started up a new plant making black masterbatches for producers of nylon and polyester fibres in Taoyuan, Taiwan. The production of highly loaded black masterbatches in engineering polymers such as polyester or nylon for fibre applications is particularly difficult. The plant's customers produce filaments with dtex numbers of around 1 to 4, with spinning speeds in excess of 3,000 m/minute. A dtex number of 1 means that 10,000 m of such a filament weighs just 1 gram, so any contamination or undispersed particle in the masterbatch will result in serious problems in the spinning process. To maintain consistent operation, ensure high-quality dispersion and prevent contamination, the new line is installed in a new building, separate from other Clariant operations at the site. It is fully automated and can be run by a single operator.
Clariant has two other black lines in Germany and the USA, but to tap the full market potential in Asia it felt the need to site a line there.
British Vita buys another TPE producer May 10, 2005
British Vita has bought another TPE producer. The acquisition of Valerio Franceschetti Elastomeri in Italy follows the purchase of Elastoteknik in Sweden in 2002 and Polytex in France in 2003. The initial purchase price is Eur 8m plus a further payment of up to Eur 3m based on the achievement of future performance targets.
Piovan paddles its own canoe May 10, 2005
Italian ancillary equipment producer Piovan, which for many years has been represented in Britain by PL Plastics Machinery, has set up its own subsidiary company as part of a continuing policy to have its own subsidiaries rather than agents. Towards the end of last year it set up a company in Austria to handle business in Central Europe.
Piovan UK is run by Nick Fox, who has joined from Motan. Premises have been found in Redditch and PL Plastics Machinery is helping with the transition. JL Goor in Ireland continues as distributor of Piovan equipment in the Irish market.
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