MATERIALS | WIRE & CABLE
capacity and reliability,” said Sergi Monros, Vice President, Sabic Polymers, Specialties BU. “Sabic’s specialty thermoplastics and dedicated design services can help the industry build these infra- structures at scale.”
Above:
Ampacet offers a wide range of solutions designed to enhance safety, durability, and efficiency in cables
HSF110 specifically for this requirement, with both offering integration of post-consumer recyclate on request.
Masterbatch manufacturer Ampacet offers a
wide range of solutions designed to enhance safety, durability, and efficiency in cables. For example, its ELTech colour solutions, based on Polyethylene (PE) and Ethylene-Vinyl Acetate (EVA), provide vibrant and durable colouring for low and medium voltage copper or aluminium power cable jackets. The portfolio also includes high-perfor- mance colour masterbatches based on PBT carrier resin designed for optical fibre cables. Engineered with high-quality pigments free from heavy metals and diarylides, ELTech colour solutions offer exceptional heat resistance and outstanding light fastness, ensuring long-lasting colour stability. Beyond aesthetics, the portfolio integrates various functional additives to optimise performance and reliability, including laser marking, UV stabilisers, flame retardants, scratch resistance, odour absorb- ers, process stabilisers, and processing aids. At the 2025 Optical Fiber Communications
Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco, US, Sabic exhibited Ultem and Siltem resins, along with LNP ELCRES polycarbonate copolymers, which it says can help customers build robust and reliable data infrastructures. The company also introduced a new Extem RH resin grade that withstands 260°C reflow soldering and whose enhanced properties support high-volume production of multi-lens arrays for optical interconnect assemblies and sub-assemblies making it well suited for emerging technologies like on-board and co-packaged optical interconnects. “The optimisation of network architecture to handle the explosion of data from AI, cloud, and social and digital media, requires infrastructures that can boost transmission speed, bandwidth
26 COMPOUNDING WORLD | May 2025
Carbon black Global megatrends such as renewable energy generation, along with the rise of data centres and the need to modernise power grids, have led to increased demand for cables that are not only reliable and capable of handling higher electricity demand and bidirectional energy flow, but are also manufactured in a sustainable way. “The ongoing advancements in materials and technology present significant opportunities for the wire and cable industry to enhance performance, sustainability, and cost-efficiency,” said Fei Deng, vice president and general manager, Carbon and Silica Technolo- gies, Cabot Corporation. “As such, these changes present opportunities for Cabot Corporation, as a supplier of specialty carbon additives as well as black masterbatches and conductive compounds, to innovate and adapt. As a critical component of cable systems, carbon black continues to play a pivotal role. For instance, it remains the most effective additive for UV protection in cable jacket materials due to its unmatched combination of cost and performance. Beyond UV protection, conduc- tive carbon blacks enable electrical conductivity in semicon compounds through the percolation mechanism, making them indispensable for semicon shielding layers inside the cable.” Cabot’s Cabelec CA3817, a conductive com- pound new for use in the W&C market, provides an excellent solution for jacketing applications, particularly where a balance of cost-efficiency and high performance is required, and is suitable for demanding applications where increased durability is critical, such as HV submarine applications. Elsewhere, the Vulcan XC and Vulcan XCmax family of conductive and extra conductive carbon blacks enhance the integrity and longevity of power cables by enabling high conductivity to dissipate voltage stress on conductors during operation. Cabot says the next generation of products in its Vulcan XCmax family will be introduced later this year. Orion is another carbon black manufacturer active in the W&C sector. “Currently, our most prominent investment is a greenfield plant in Texas,” said Martin Dauch, Global Director of Marketing for polymers at Orion. “The facility will produce acetylene black, an additive essential for the semiconductive layer in submarine and underground HV and EHV cables. Carbon black
www.compoundingworld.com
IMAGE: AMPACET
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