Strictly-Extrusion

US plastics compounder A Schulman has completed a EUR 15.3m capacity expansion for engineered compounds at its plant in Sindorfkerpen, Germany. This lifts nameplate output by 35% to 57,169 t/y. The company said the expansion should allow it to pursue further growth opportunities in Europe. To lift its profile in Asia, Schulman also has announced plans to build a 20,000 t/y plant in Dongguan, near Hong Kong, to manufacture materials for Chinese film, automotive and packaging markets.The facility is expected to start up before the end of 2004.

Belgian window and building profiles manufacturer Deceuninck has bought the in-house profile extrusion business of Atlantem, a subsidiary of French company building products company Groupe VM Matériaux.
The deal, for an undisclosed figure, gives Deceuninck a seven-year exclusive profile supply contract to Atlantem’s door and window manufacturing operation at Noyal-Pontivny, in Brittany. Atlantem manufactures around 100,000 PVCu windows each year. According to Deceuninck, the business will help its French subsidiary meet its target of breaking the EURO 60m sales barrier; sales for 2001 stood at EURO52.5m.

With global sales of EURO 350.6m in 2001, Deceuninck claims to be the world’s third largest manufacturer of PVC building profiles. The company, which is headquartered at Hooglede-Gits in Belgium, employs almost 1,700 people across its 20 sales and manufacturing subsidiaries.

Environmental Polymer Products (EPP), UK, is launching a range of wood fibre-reinforced polymer composite building profiles manufactured from recycled post-consumer waste. It announced at this week’s Plastics Recycling 2002 conference that pre-launch production of the Knotwood range of profiles is already underway.
Target applications include external construction profiles for decking and fencing. The company is implementing a distribution network for the product, which it hopes to see stocked in timber depots across the UK.Knotwood profiles are manufactured in a 50:50 blend of wood fibre and HDPE recovered from recycled post-consumer milk bottles. The process uses an in-line compounding and extrusion process developed in-house by EPP in St Helens. Orme said the Knotwood pricing structure will also enable it to use virgin PE, meaning development of the product should not be compromised by shortages of post-consumer recycled resin.

The company has invested EURO 1.86m in two new manufacturing lines for the Knotwood project.The first line, which has a capacity of around 700kg/hr, is already installed and will be in full production by mid-September. The second line of 2,000kg/hr will be installed later this year. A key element in the Knotwood production lines is a patented cooling technology which, Orme claims, will allow it to extrude solid, hollow and foamed profiles at high line speeds. The firm plans to start selling Knotwood production licences worldwide next year. It is also considering supplying compounded material in pellet form.

Basell, The Netherlands, has started up a new 260,000 t/y polypropylene plant at its Tarragona East complex in Spain. Output from the plant, which uses the company´s proprietary “Novolen” technology to manufacture a wide range of homopolymer and heterophasic copolymer grades, will help Basell to better serve European customers and keep pace with the region´s market demand, the joint venture of BASF, Germany and Shell said. Basell said it is closing or mothballing 330,000 t/y of older European PP capacity this year.

PCL Packaging Corp., USA, has diversified its packaging business with the acquisition of Coastal Plastics Corp. of Jacksonville. Coastal has annual sales of about US$12 million and makes modified-atmosphere food packaging, shrink wrap, shipping sacks, trash can liners and converting film. PCL said it may consolidate Coastal´s plant with a PCL facility in Jacksonville.

With the completion of the final extension to its Chinese manufacturing company Profilex Plastics Products (Shenzhen) Co Ltd., the traditional German company Profilex AG has further stepped up its presence and capacity on the Asian market, alongside its marketing companies in Beijing and Hong Kong. As Profilex explained to PIE, the decision in favour of its location policy has to be viewed against the backdrop of growing globalisation amongst the company´s international industrial customers, as well as the constantly increasing cost pressure on west European producers.
The focal activities of the subsidiary in Shenzhen include the production of customised packing tubes for the electronics industry, special engineering profiles and engineering injection mouldings. The production facilities in China are used not only for large batches but also for small production runs and special products for customers from all over the world, which are then “delivered just-in-time, with the aid of a perfect logistics system”. The advantages of this location are the favourable production costs, especially for cost intensive products, and the access that it gives to the strongly growing Chinese market, with all the opportunities this has to offer.
Since the start of the year, the German parent company has also been represented on the US market with Profilex Plastics LLC (Atlanta / USA). Here too, it is market proximity, attractive prices, service, rapidity and flexibility that are the key factors for satisfying the requirements of US customers. As Profilex points out, this internationalisation of the company´s structure serves to meet the prime target of a competent and customer-oriented presence on the world markets.

For the tens of thousands of industry professionals expected to pre-register to attend the NPE 2003 exposition, the website for the event, www.npe.org, is now open for business, it was announced today by The Society of the Plastics Industry, Inc. (SPI), sponsor of the triennial plastics and elastomers trade show.With nearly a year to go before the show opens on June 23, 2003 at Chicago’s McCormick Place, attendees can save money by using the site to pre-register. While the cost of registering at NPE 2003 itself will be $75, the fees for pre-registering are $25 from July through December 2002 and $50 thereafter.

Although www.npe.org had been “live” since last October to serve companies looking to exhibit at NPE 2003, on July 1 SPI introduced a completely new and more extensive website at the address, with resources for attendees. Besides pre-registration, features currently available to site visitors include a searchable list of exhibitors, videos of NPE, a 360-degree virtual tour, links to city of Chicago and McCormick Place websites, and contact information for, and e-mail links to, SPI and other organizations involved in preparing the show. International visitors can access information on the show in eight languages and obtain contact details for more than 60 overseas partners in countries around the world.

The acquisition of Singapore Polymer Corporation (SPC) last Fall by U.S.-based Teknor Apex Company now gives Asian processors of vinyl and thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) compounds access to more than 14,000 established Teknor Apex formulations, SPC announced at Chinaplas 2002. Many of the compounds developed by Teknor Apex already meet standards and specifications required of processors that export to the U.S., Canada, or Europe, according to Cheah Sin Hua, SPC’s managing director.

Alcoa Building Products Inc., USA, is investing US$1.8 million to expand its Denison extrusion plant. The Pittsburgh-based vinyl siding producer will install four lines and add 60 employees, said Greg Boatwright, director of vinyl operations. He would not disclose the current number of extrusion lines or employees in the 350,000-square-foot facility. The project is to be complete by the end of August.

World consumption of BOPP films exceeded 3m tonnes in 2001, according to British market research group AMI Consulting. AMI says BOPP is mushrooming from a specialist replacement for cellulose film into one of the leading flexible plastics packaging materials. Some 200 companies worldwide produce BOPP films, with the ten largest accounting for 40% of the market. Following 10% annual growth in the 1990s, AMI is projecting a slowdown to 7%.