NEWS


Profile producer Eurocell grows both sales and profits in 2019


UK-based profiles manufac- turer Eurocell has reported a 10% growth in sales for 2019. The company posted


sales exceeding £279 million (US$339m) for the year. The figures include sales from recent acquisitions in the building plastics division. Dis- counting these, the underly- ing sales growth was 8%. At the same time,


profitability (EBITDA) rose 5% to almost £32m (US$39m). “We have reported robust financial results for 2019 and, despite Brexit-related and political uncertainty, delivered another year of strong sales growth and a good improvement in gross margin,” said Mark Kelly, CEO of Eurocell. In its Profiles division, the company reported sales of nearly £116m (US$141m), an increase of 7%. Profits here were flat, at nearly £18m (US$22m). In Building Plastics – which includes PVC foam products – sales


Kelly: “Another year of strong sales growth and a good improvement in gross margin”


increased by 12%, while profits rose 14%. Eurocell manufactured almost 55,000 tonnes of rigid and foam PVC profiles at its primary extrusion facilities, a 10% increase compared to 2018. This increased production was made possible through a capital expenditure programme in 2019 – costing around £5m (US$6m) – to improve manufacturing efficiency and increase co-extrusion and foam capacity by 30% and


15%, respectively. Overall equipment effectiveness improved from 71% to 73%, while scrap levels dropped from 9% to 8%. The company has also continued to increased recycling: it used 13,400 tonnes of recycled PVC compound in the manufac- ture of co-extruded rigid profiles. This was 23% of overall material consump- tion (up from 9,500 tonnes, and 17%, in 2018). “Despite very wet weather so far this year, we have made a good start to 2020: sales and margins for the first two months are in line with our expectations,” said Kelly. “As yet, there has been no discernible impact on our business from Covid-19, although we remain very alert to this possibility.” n Since Eurocell’s results were announced, the company says it “will temporarily close for a period of three weeks”. � www.eurocell.co.uk


Vynova launches “bio” PVC


Vynova has launched a range of “bio-attributed” PVC resins. Available for both rigid and flexible applications, the new grades will be offered in a range of K-values and will be produced at its sites at Beek in the Netherlands and at Mazingarbe in France. The resins are manufac-


tured using renewable ethylene from second-gen- eration biomass feedstock from SABIC’s facility at Geleen in the Netherlands. The company said that this will reduce its fossil feed- stock requirement and cut CO2 emissions by more than 90%. Vynova said the


materials carry ISCC Plus certification. “With these new resins,


we are responding to increasing customer demand to take another step towards a more circular PVC value chain,” said Jonathan Stewart, vice president of PVC business management. � www.vynova-group.com


German converters report sales decline


GKV, the organisation that represents German plastics processors, reported a dip of around 1% in overall turnover last year.


It said that sales fell to €65.1bn in


2019, a fall of 1.2% compared to 2018. Within this, domestic sales fell nearly 2% to around €40bn, while exports fell almost 1% to just under €25bn. As well as decreased turnover,


www.pipeandprofile.com


processing volumes also fell – by around 1.2% to 14.6 million tonnes of plastic. In the same period, the indus- try’s workforce increased marginally (by 0.3%) – taking numbers to 336,000 by the end of 2019. The number of processing plants


rose by 3%, to just over 3,000 facilities. GKV’s figures are not broken down into specific processes (such as


extrusion). However, the construction sector – which is likely to account for most pipe and profile extrusion activity – saw an unchanged amount of material processed (5.3m tonnes), while turnover in the sector rose by 2% to almost €21bn. All figures apply to plants with more than 20 employees, said GKV. � www.gkv.de


April 2020 | PIPE & PROFILE EXTRUSION 5


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