NEWS
Plaskolite buys Covestro’s North American PC sheet business
Acrylic sheet manufacturer Plaskolite is to buy Covestro’s North American polycarbon- ate sheet business. The acquisition will combine the leaders of acrylic and polycarbonate sheet manufacturing in North America, said Plaskolite. For Covestro, it is part of a wider strategy to exit the polycarbonate sheet business worldwide. As part of the US transac- tion – which is expected to complete by August of this
year – Plaskolite will acquire sheet headquarters, production sites and warehouse facilities in Sheffield, Massachusetts and maintain an existing third-party distribution warehouse facility in Hebron, Ohio. After the acquisition, it will employ 950 people. “This is transformational
for Plaskolite and strength- ens our industry leadership position,” said Mitchell Grindley, Plaskolite’s
president and CEO. “We will be the only manufacturer ever to offer a complete clear sheet product portfo- lio, including acrylic, polycarbonate, PETG and ABS.” The move follows
Plaskolite’s announcement in February that it will acquire the Continuous Cast Acrylic Sheet Business of Lucite International, giving it an entry into the spa and bath sheet business. Covestro will soon open
ETFE saves steel in stadium
a bidding process for its European operations, and afterwards a similar process for its remaining outlets in the Asia-Pacific region. Patrick Thomas, CEO of
Covestro, said: “We continu- ously evaluate our portfolio, and it became clear that our sheets business will not be a strategic fit to our polycar- bonates business in the long term. We decided that it can develop and grow better under new ownership.” �
www.plaskolite.com
German converters’ record year
GKV, the organisation that represents German plastics processors, reported a record perfor- mance last year. It said that sales rose to €63.7bn in 2017, a rise of nearly 5% over the previous year. As well as increased
3M Dyneon’s ETFE fluoroplastic has saved around 1,500 tonnes of steel in the construction of Estadio Cuauhtémoc – the home ground of Mexican first division football club FC Puebla. Its façade consists of 124 vertical segments, each about 40m high. A total of 5,952 ETFE film sections in three shades were welded to one another for the segments. The ETFE films require no plasticisers – which would evaporate over time and could promote algae or fungal growth. ETFE films are smooth enough to ensure that rain showers are sufficient to clean the façade. They are also resistant to other chemicals, so can withstand environmental influences such as exhaust emissions for decades, says 3M. Nowofol of Germany extruded the 200 micron films. The weight per unit area of ETFE is around 95% lower than that of glass. As a result, only 1,000 tonnes of steel were needed to support the façade – compared with 2,500 that would have been needed for a glass version. �
www.dyneon.eu
www.filmandsheet.com
turnover, processing volume also increased – up around 4.6% to 14.7 million tonnes of plastic. In the same period, the industry’s workforce increased by around 2% – taking numbers beyond 320,000 by the end of 2017. “For 2018, we estimate
an increase in sales of around 4%,” said Oliver Möllenstädt, CEO of GKV. �
www.gkv.de
April 2018 | FILM & SHEET EXTRUSION 5
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