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automotive | Interior/exterior


Right: This trim panel is injection moulded in


LyondellBasell’s Softell Textile polyolefin


compound to create a


fabric-like appearance


Below: Gear lever knobs injection moulded in Polykemi’s Polyfill Touch reinforced polyolefin, which is said to display haptics to rival TPUs


grades with 25%. The company’s latest development is a grade with only 7% talc, which Eriksson says has the performance of a traditional 20% reinforced PP homopolymer. He does not go into detail on the composition, only saying that it uses a talc that is finer and more platey than the former state of the art, as well as a polypropylene with high crystallinity to provide more stiffness. Polykemi also continues to


develop products with enhanced haptics. The latest example is its PolyFill Touch line of reinforced polyolefins. Eriksson says these compounds have proven capable of replacing more expensive TPUs in applications such as gear shift knobs. “Although the part is small, it will prove its worth every time the car is used and it constitutes another example of the established trend with polyole- fins grabbing market share from more costly poly- mers,” he says.


A light touch Borealis used it K2016 presence to show off a whole host of components injection moulded in its PP compounds for the latest version of the Opel Astra. These parts included door panels, pillars and other interior trim parts, front and rear bumpers, bumper brackets, and trunk claddings. The car, voted European Car of the Year 2016 in part due to its environmental credentials, is built on the General


Motors Delta 2 platform. It weighs between


120 and 200kg less than the previous version (depending on the specification). Similar Chevrolet Cruze models are also being built at other GM locations around the world. According to Nicholas Kolesch, Head of Marketing


Right: Some


35kg of Borealis materials are used in the


latest General Motors Astra model


for Polyolefins in Automotive at Borealis, the company’s Borstar polymerisation process has been developed to obtain materials with optimal density and that can be used to produce parts with optimal wall thickness. He says the company supplies almost all of the 35kg of polypropylene used in the vehicle. As Delta 2 is a global platform, Kolesch says


Borealis benefited from its global compounding network and the ability that provides to offer local supply to the various moulding operations producing parts for the cars (sister company Borouge is supplying materials in China). The company is now also looking to expand in the US. Borealis already has a plant produc-


14 INJECTION WORLD | November/December 2016 www.injectionworld.com


ing wire and cable compounds in New Jersey, but is now exploring opportuni- ties for new compounding operations that would be closer to the automotive industry further west and south. Borealis also claims to be the first major PP supplier to offer carbon fibre reinforced compounds. The company’s Fibremod Carbon family makes use of carbon fibre waste created in composite production operations. Kolesch says this presents a great opportunity for metal replacement, especially in electric vehicles (Fibremod Carbon has a flexural modulus of 18 GPa). “We are aiming to bring carbon fibre


reinforced materials into mid-range vehicles,” he says. Lightweighting solutions based on polypropylene abounded at the K show. For example, So.F.teR - soon to be part of Celanese - was demonstrating its Litepol compounds (also available based on polyamides), which use hollow glass microspheres to achieve their objective.


Moves in LFTs Trinseo is eyeing future growth in semi-structural parts such as tailgates and IP carriers and doors. It has just unveiled an Enlite PP concentrate containing 85% long glass fibres for letting down into neat PP to produce “regular” LGF compounds with around 30% glass. Cost savings of up to 10% over using regular 60% concen- trates (that the company will continue to make) are claimed.


“This is an industry first,” claims Hayati Yarkadas,


president of Trinseo’s Performance Materials business in Europe. The company developed the material on a pilot line in Europe and has just started up a commer- cial line making the material in the US. Trinseo, which came out of Dow in 2010, has no in-house PP polymer capacity (Dow did have when it developed its first PP-LGF grades but it sold that PP business to Braskem in 2011) but Yarkadas says the development of PP-LGF


PHOTO: PETER MAPLESTON


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