Alcoa Building Products Inc. is shuttering its Princeville vinyl extrusion plant and exiting the manufactured housing market, as parent company Alcoa Inc. lays off 6,500 internationally. According to the company the firm will focus on wholesale distribution and making acquisitions. The Princeville plant employed 250.
ServTek has launched the MeltStar screw, which has clear advantages in crucial areas of colour mixing such as colour ratio, streak/swirl elimination, and visible surface colour. MeltStar is reported to be the only screw found to eliminate streaking, swirling, and core removal marks at a 1% colour ratio. This brings obvious benefits such as lower scrap rates, reduced cycle times, and overall cost-savings. MeltStar is a design innovation based on certain barrier screw features. The undercut barrier flight separates solids from the melt. The melt channel cross- section continually increases downchannel to minimise shear and work input to the melted particles that flow over the
barrier flight. The solid channel cross section continually decreases downchannel to maintain compression and work input to the unmelted particles. By removing the melted material from the working compression channel, unmelted pellets are continually presented to the barrel surface,
maximising the melting capacity of the screw. Barrier melting capacity is combined with a spiral mixing head to provide melt homogeneity and colour mixing. The multiple spiral channels split the material flow in the vertical plane, and the V-cuts in the outer diameter split the flow in the horizontal plane.
AXON supply the Double Bubble Film Blowing Line which is used for the manufacture of shrinkable sausage casings, packaging films and bags, as well as bi-oriented film for packaging and vacuum forming. The systems are built for monolayer film as well as for multilayer film. The company makes these lines from 150 mm nip roller width upwards to a maximum 2 m nip roller width. The picture shows the first step with downward extrusion and the mist producer and its cooling tank; the second step bi-orientation tower with its re-heating tank, and the thermofixing tower with re-heating oven and two nip-rollers.
Rexam plc is selling ist polyethylene blown film plant in Lakeville to Tyco Plastics LP subsidiary Sunbelt Manufacturing Inc. for US$12 million. The facility produces a range of films for the construction industry. It employs 94 and has annual sales of US$37 million, London-based Rexam said.
GE Plastics and Film Specialties Inc.announced that FSI has granted GE an exclusive worldwide license to make, use, and sell Visgard(TM) coated film and sheet products, manufactured from GE engineering thermoplastic film and sheet substrates. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Visgard is a proprietary coating solution developed by FSI, and is designed to combine the functional utility of a clear, durable anti-fog coating with excellent scratch resistance and thermo-formability. Current and potential applications include safety lenses, sport visors, gauge and instrument covers, polarizers, windshields, headlights, displays, appliances, commercial freezer doors, in-mold decorative lenses, mirrors, optical film and architectural glazing.
Industrias Vassallo Inc., Puerto Rico will begin extruding wood composite profiles in Kentucky by next June. The Ponce, Puerto Rico-based company will spend nearly US$3 million on its first mainland U.S. facility. President Rafael Vassallo Collazo said the firm plans to have 60 employees and four extrusion lines at a site near Campbellsville that has not been finalized.
Facing a large volume of export business, Extrusion Dies Inc. has launched a new service facility in England to provide better access for customers. EDI opened the 3,000-square-foot building Nov. 1 to focus initially on die repair and remanufacturing, said John Ulcej, executive vice president of engineering and technology.
Spartech Corp. has completed the purchase of certain assets of Pro-Form, Inc., a manufacturer of extruded sheet and profiles. Spartech will integrate the business into several of its 22 Spartech Plastics operating facilities. Spartech’s chairman, president, and CEO Bradley B. Buechler, stated, “This acquisition, which approximates US$7.5 million in annual sales, provides a good complement to our existing extruded sheet business, particularly in the bath- and-shower and recreation-and-leisure markets.”
A new study by Freedonia Group, USA, predicts that the Asia/Pacific region will see faster growth in plastic pipe demand than any other area of the globe in the next four years. The study, “World Plastic Pipe,” forecasts 6.4% annual growth in demand (measured in meters of pipe) from 2000 to 2005, as compared with 3.1%/yr for both the U.S. and Europe, and 5.3%/yr for the rest of the world. In the previous five years, North America had been the fastest-growing market. North America is currently the largest market for plastic pipe, at 38.3% of the world total, and it will remain so in 2005, when it will consume 36.4% of the total. Asia/Pacific will increase from 21.5% to 23.8% of the global market.
Gillard will be exhibiting two new extrusion cutters at K-2001, including the Servo-Torq Ultra, a high performance rotary cutter. This machine uses the latest AC brushless servo motors with a fully digital control system. Gillard claim that this system can hold length accuracies to within ±0.1 mm, even at high line speeds. Also on display will be Gillard’s table-top rotary cutter, the Servo-Torq Mini. This machine combines AC servo rotary cutting and feeding in a compact bench mounted design. Flexible tube and profile up to 30 mm diameter can be cut by the machine’s flying knife method. In addition, Gillard will be exhibiting five types of caterpillar haul-offs, and three different models of cutting machines.