SPECIAL FEATURE | 10 YEARS OF COMPOUNDING WORLD
William Barnet to build a 15,000 tonne compound- ing operation. Meanwhile, Domo Chemicals started up its first PA compounding in China and DuPont opened an engineering plastics compounding plant at Shanghai. For plastics machinery makers, the economic
climate was excellent. Germany’s VDMA machinery association said production would for the first time break the €7bn barrier. In the US, plastics machin- ery shipments were up for fifth year in succession to $1.29bn. And Italian plastics machinery exports also hit an all-time record of €2.9bn. Against that background, it was little surprise that the K2016 show attracted a record attendance — more than 230,000 people. The big theme for the show was Industry 4.0 — the so-called fourth industrial revolution — and major compounding machinery players such as Coperion and Leistritz showed developments that exploited some of the new digital opportunities.
2017 M&A activity continued into 2017 but it soon became evident that seeing an opportunity was, in some cases, a lot easier than realising it. While the Dow Dupont merger completed in 2017, others proved more challenging. Huntsman and Clariant’s plans to create a €13bn chemicals group were defeated by shareholders; Tronox’s proposed acquisition of Cristal’s TiO2
We can’t ignore it! In 2016, the UK voted to end its 45-year membership of the European Union, causing uncertainty and concern across European industry. Two and a half years later and after seemingly-endless discussion — most within the UK itself — the shape of the ongoing EU-UK trading relationship and regula- tory framework is still no clearer
Color Concentrates were purchased by investment group Arsenal Capital; Albis Plastic bought carbon fibre compounds maker Wipag Group; and Evonik acquired 3M’s Accurel porous polymer additive carrier business. Compounding expansions also continued
business was referred to
regulators and has yet to gain US clearance; and BASF is still negotiating with European regulators over its planned purchase of Solvay’s PA business. Some deals — albeit much smaller scale —did complete, however. PolyAd Services was bought by Altana and integrated into Byk; Celanese acquired Israel-headquartered Nilit; Trinseo bought Italian TPE compounder API; Carolina Color and Breen
PHOTO: COVESTRO
apace. In the US, Clariant added medical com- pounding capacity and Polyram Group announced plans to build a compounding plant in Indiana. In Europe, Ampacet announced expansions in Belgium and Luxembourg; Teknor Apex said it would build a new plant in Germany and Akro- Plastic added two compounding lines at its facility; Toray said it would construct a PPS compounding unit in Hungary; and Hexpol added capacity at its German location. Russia was also attracting investment again — local firm Polyplastic said it had upped compounding capacity at Engels to 72,000 tonnes/yr and Gabriel-Chemie said it planned a new masterbatch plant in the country. In the machinery sector, CPM Extrusion acquired Extricom of Germany; Erema set up its Powerfil division to sell melt filters; while Coperion celebrat- ed the 60th
anniversary of its ZSK twin screw
Covestro was one of many companies to expand production capacities in China during 2017
60 COMPOUNDING WORLD | December 2018
compounding extruder design. Other notable events included two regulatory decisions by ECHA. The first to add BPA to the REACH SHVC list and the second to classify TiO2 as a Category 2 carcinogen. And later in the year Ascend Performance Materials announced investments to increase PA66 capacity – perhaps a warning of the issues that were to appear in early 2018.
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2017
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