NEWS | INTERVIEW
Internal view of Mocom’s plant at Hamburg in Germany, which will be its technical and product development hub
have both been developed to serve current market needs.
Mocom’s growth in China cooled a little over the past two years, according to Kaatze. However, the US market is performing strongly. The company has just commissioned a new $3m compounding line at its Duncan site and is expecting to see considerable further growth resulting from the US government’s introduction last year of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). This makes $500bn of funding and tax breaks available to US businesses to invest in areas such as clean energy and sustainable technolo- gies such as EVs. Sustainability is the second driver behind Mocom’s merger plans and Kaatze sees considerable value in integrating each company’s expertise in areas such as sourcing, recycling and compound- ing. “It is a trend that’s pretty clear, definitely in Europe, but we also see it in other regions,” he said. “The IRA is laying a good base for growth opportuni- ties,” Kaatze said. “The sustainability aspect is certainly at a different level in the US compared to Europe.
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However, being right in the discussion with our team we do hear quite a bit going on. We should not forget that taken by itself, California would represent the fifth largest economy in the world and California is pretty much amongst the leaders globally when it comes to sustainabil- ity regulations.” According to Kaatze, Mocom aims to offer its customers in the plastics industry a broad range of high performance mechani- cally recycled compounds that meet demands for circu- larity. “Mechanical recycling is usually very complex, because you’re starting with small bits and pieces that you need to collect out of a product again, and that means you need to have a good understanding of the end use markets. In the end it’s going into the supply chain and trying to get your hands on to it.” Wipag has already
extended its recycling technology expertise into sourcing through its closed loop recycling schemes and its RaaS (Recycling as a Service) consultancy and logistics initiative. Kaatze sees significant potential to apply that expertise further within Mocom’s technical
COMPOUNDING WORLD | November 2023
compounds sector. “When you look at technical polymers, mechan- ical recycling is still to a large degree dependant on production waste. Now that is, by definition, limited because every producer is trying to reduce their waste and you can’t grow in that. If we want to follow our belief that we need to significantly grow the circularity of the business we need to tap into end-of-life material,” he said. Kaatze cites the example
of the automotive industry, which is a key market for Mocom. Any one car can contain 150 or more different compound types and these need to be selectively extracted from the light shredder fraction at end-of-life. “The sorting mechanisms
IMAGE: OTTO KRAHN GROUP
that work for a lot of the packaging waste and polyolefins don’t necessar- ily work for technical polymers. So, what we’re working on is the supply chains and getting our hands on material before it goes into the shredder,” he says. “The aim that we have is that for every product we offer, we also have not only a prime but also a recycled alternative.” Mocom already has an
extensive portfolio of techni- cal compound grades containing post-consumer and post-industrial recy- clates within its Altech ECO and Alfater XL ECO product line and recently introduced some recyclate based grades for lighting applica- tions (Alcom LB ECO for reflector applications and
With more than 150 different compound types in a single car, sourcing material suitable for recycled engineering compounds means developing supply chains
www.compoundingworld.com
IMAGE: OTTO KRAHN GROUP
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