NEWS
Albis aims to leverage Wipag’s carbon fibre in compounds
Investment from its new owner Albis Plastic will enable Wipag Deutschland to move to full-scale production of polypropylene or polyamide com- pounds reinforced with carbon fibre sourced from post-industrial sources. A pilot plant at Wipag’s facility in Neuburg, Germany, started in 2014 and is now running at its 600 tpa capacity, meeting strong demand for injection moulding compounds, Albis executives told Plastics Recycling World. A €1m investment in the plant, including a new extrusion line, will allow Wipag to scale-up produc- tion from May and expand its capacity to 4,000 tpa. Albis acquired Wipag’s German business in January, comprising the recycling-com- pounding facility in Neuburg and another in Gardelegen (Wipag’s shares in joint ventures with ACI in the USA and PPR in the UK were not part of the deal). Wipag uses automotive waste — recycling bumpers, instrument panels and wheel arch liners to produce PP compounds as well as recycled PA, ABS and PC/ABS materials. This Closed-Loop process is a prime example of the circular economy, the company said. Wipag’s new innovative recycling of carbon fibre (CF) will add a new technology and allow Albis to offer CF-reinforced PP and PA com-
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pounds to the automotive and other industries in the future, the company said.
Albis is no newcomer to the use of
recycled plastics. It was more than 15 years ago that an Albis glass-filled PA compound with recycled content was first used in automotive applications, such as engine covers, said Bernd Sparenberg, Vice President Technical Compounds at Albis. Its Altech ECO
injection moulding compound. The attraction of Wipag’s CF material (WIC-series) is its ability to take lightweight construction in automotive and other sectors a step further. Replacing a 50% GF filled PA com- pound with a 30% CF filled PP com- pound leads to a big weight reduction while maintaining material properties. Sparenberg said that a volume pricing approach also shows the CF-PP or CF-PA compounds to be more cost effective due to lower density. “We can come to the market with a CF compound that is much reduced in price, and it becomes afford- able against GF,” he said. On the basis of price per kilogramme, CF-PP or CF-PA are more expen- sive than GF-PA, he said, but as
Wipag is planning full-scale production of its PP compound reinforced with CF
compounds use up to 100% recycled materials and have “Near-to-Prime” quality, the company says. Thomas Marquardt, who now heads the acquired Wipag business, high- lighted the efficient process devel- oped by Wipag for recycling offcuts from CF part production into an
the WIC CF-compounds have a lower density, the moulded part results in lower cost than a GF-PA equivalent. More investments are being planned around the Albis group to pursue a global growth strategy in its compounding business. In China, the group will add two new extrusion lines and expand compounding capacity at its Changshu plant in the third quarter of this year. An important element of its strategy is to grow in sustainable recycled materials, said Sparenberg. �
www.albis.com �
www.wipag.com
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