NEWS
Celanese to consolidate European compounding
Celanese is to establish a ‘European compounding centre of excellence’ for its Engineered Materials business at its site in Forli, Italy. As part of the plan, the company said compounding operations at its sites at Kaiserslautern and Wehr in Germany and Ferrara Marconi in Italy will transfer to the Forli location over the next 12 to 24 months. The company said the move will align the structure of its European operations with the models already in place in the Americas and Asia. Celanese said Forli is the viable choice as the location has the largest existing infrastructure and
capabilities for speciality compounding, a physical layout that allows for future expansion, and expertise in engineering polymers. Forli was formerly the
headquarters of the So.F.Ter compounding business that Celanese acquired in 2016. The company produced a range of TPE and
engineering thermoplastic compounds. Celanese said inventory build, customer requalification and transfer of compounding assets will take place over the next two years. n In an unrelated move, Celanese has agreed to sell its 45% stake in its Polyplastics joint venture to Japan’s Daicel for $1.575bn.
Polyplastics is headquartered in Japan and makes engineered polymers including POM, LCP and PPS. The two companies co-founded it as a 45/55 joint venture in 1964. Lori Ryerkerk, Celanese chair and CEO said it will “use this opportunity to monetise a historically passive investment and allocate significant capital to higher growth businesses within Celanese”. These include its Engineered Materials business, which will now compete with Polyplastics in markets and regions where there are overlapping product lines. �
www.celanese.com
BASF explores traceability
BASF Plastic Additives and Australian firm Security Matters, a blockchain and coding specialist, have signed a joint development agreement “to develop solutions for plastics traceability and circularity”. The aim of the deal is to develop techniques for tracking
and validation of closed loop recycling systems. BASF will apply its plastics knowledge; Security Matters will contribute its track and trace technology �
www.plasticadditives.basf.com �
www.securitymattersltd.com
Biesterfeld invests in innovation
Plastics and additives distributor Biesterfeld has opened an 800m² ‘Lab & Innovation Centre’ at its headquarters site at Hamburg in Germany. The centre houses a laboratory as well as a conference room and meeting areas. The new facility will be used mainly for application-related laboratory activities, including development of new formulations, product tests and customer-specific projects. “Alongside individual
project work in accordance with customer requirements, the laboratory will be used to screen new raw materi- als from our partners and to conduct comparative studies,” said Laboratory Manager Dr Lisa Nahrwold. In addition to the new
centre, Biesterfeld has other regional laboratories in Norway, Turkey and Poland. �
www.biesterfeld.com
Lanxess fills out Ford Kuga front end module
Montaplast is producing this FEM for Ford using a high-flow Durethan PA from Lanxess
www.compoundingworld.com
The highly integrated plastic-metal composite bolster developed and manufac- tured by Montaplast for the latest Ford Kuga SUV uses fibreglass-reinforced high-flow Durethan BKV30H2.0EF PA6 from Lanxess. “Our easy-flowing PA6 can be processed at lower injection pressures,” said Ulrich Dajek, a hybrid design expert at Lanxess. “For this reason, smaller injection moulding machines with lower clamping forces can be used in the production of the hybrid bolster.” According to Lanxess, PA6 offers two key advantages over PP in this applica- tion — the threaded connections are more reliable and the bolster can better withstand the thermal load that arises when the grille shutters are closed. Furthermore, Dajek said component areas with filigree geometries can be designed with around 20% thinner walls due to the improved flow. �
www.lanxess.com
August 2020 | COMPOUNDING WORLD 5
IMAGE: LANXESS
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