korea’s polyurethane industry moves onwards · 302016 was the eighth year of global light vehicle...
TRANSCRIPT
December 2017/January 2018Vol. 34. No 6
A PUBLICATION
REPORTING ON THE GLOBAL PU INDUSTRY SINCE 1984
Wanted: cleaner, fresher auto interiors
Korea’s polyurethane industry moves onwards
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URETHANES TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018
3www.utech-polyurethane.com contentscontents
23 PIR board and spray foam experienced
the highest growth during the study period. Helen HarkerIAL Consultants
27The most comfortable bed is
the one I want to makeYong Chai JungDUT
28It is better to be close to customers
Yong Kwon LeeKangam Chemical
302016 was the eighth year of global light
vehicle sales growth, but we can’t get too light-hearted. This is a recover from a deep recession.Justin CoxLMC Automotive
31This technology could be the fi rst
step in reducing aldehyde emissions Sven de VisMilliken
33Not only do OEM’s have their own
individual specifi cations and requirements, for emissions, odour and related testing standards, the countries have their own concentration limits.Setefano GrassiniDow Automotive
33Polyol producers prefer liquid
antioxidants with good miscibility and low viscosity.Clement BarriereAddivant
35We had a customer, who bought a
machine from us in the 1960s, call us up recently and ask for a duplicate machine. We could have made one, but technology has moved on.Francis PinckersFecken-Kirfel
newslines 6-24| 6 Hennecke buys OMS, Pruszynski to acquire PU foam
sandwich panel producer, Isopan expands PU boards in Romania, NZ PU foam producer Acma in administration, Kingspan invests in South America.
8 IMA disappointed with Sky News Grenfell report, Turkish Systems House Derkim in Uzbek jv, SKC expands in Nantong.
9 Resilient Huntsman benefits from production consistency in Q3, Huntsman looking for bolt-ons post Clariant non-merger, Huntsman considers building PU machinery factory, FXI changes hands.
10 US Furniture flammability legislation proposed, NAFRA looks to challenge CPSC over ‘political’ FR guidance, Rhode Island, Maine institute flame retardant bans.
11 Icynene spends $160m on Lapolla, buys Isolat too, Tempur Sealy feels uncomfortable effect of Mattress Firm termination in Q3, Arsenal sells Accella Performance Materials to Carlisle, Canadian foam price fixing lawsuits settled.
12 Kingspan passes through price rises to see sales rise in Q3, Carbon4PUR Spire project for rigid polyols from flue gas launches, Recticel grows revenue in Q3.
13 KM launches three new quick colour change mix heads, Perstorp specialties division sales up 19% in Q3, Grammer nine months sales up 5.8%, Huntsman-Clariant merger off.
14 Contaminated TDI causes production problems.
15 Russian government in talks with big-five isocyanate producers, Russia’s polyurethane industry emerges from economic crisis, Russia’s Sintez OKA moves into PU production.
16 Tosoh benefits from MDI price hikes in H1 results, PTT invests in Vencorex and Myriant, Meiling adds investment to Pakistan refrigerator JV, Sheela sales up 8.6% in H1 2018.
17 Wanhua ups its nine month sales, BASF raises amines capacity in Shanghai, Haier and Covestro in cooperation agreement.
18 Juyuan starts up polyether polyol plant, PU tyres roll out on ofo bikes, Songwon adds TPU capacity, launches new grade.
23 Getting back to where we were, IAL details North America PU market changes for CPI.
24 Pricing Trends: which direction will isocyanates take in 2018.
features 25-37|
Front cover picture: The throne room at Korea’s Gyeongbokgung palace. See our feature on Korea on pages 25-30 in this issue. Credit: istock/TwilightShow
All the parts to hand inside Fecken-Kirfel
Improve comfort, reduce weight, reduce emissions. Easy, right?
Polyurethane tyres help make free bikes work
Kingspan forcing price rises down the value chain
34
departments 38.
35
12
Diary of upcoming events and data on the North American Polyurethane market from IAL + CPI.
25 Korea: Setting the Scene. Since Urethanes Technology last visited Korea in 2015, the industry has continued to grow.
26 DUT Making its own way ahead.
27 Kangam Chemicals running the race.
28 Kumho Chemical explains how it is being flexible with foam and may have one of the oldest Hennecke lines in existence.
29 Sehotech looks towards the complete package of catalysts for polyurethanes.
30 Improving interior air quality is the name of the game with proposals that the PU industry can offer to improve interior air quality in the cars of tomorrow.
35 Cutting a Dash, we look around Fecken-Kirfel’s plant in Aachen.
36 Banish the black arts to improve your business. Part of our Production Improvement Series.
18
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It’s getting started In a feature-packed issue, we bring you the results of an in-depth tour of key polyurethane players in South Korea. A land of good food, hospitable people and a polyurethane industry that is doing well, pulled along by the world’s increasing demand for Korean cars. It is also pushed firmly along by integration into research and development in the university sector, as we discuss on pages 25 to 29.
The automotive industry also forms the focus of the subsequent five pages, as we look at some recent developments in emission reductions, and how innovative polyurethane additives can help. This section is based on the UTECH Congress that was held in Amsterdam in early October, and we were fortunate to have an OEM and a number of Tier 1 seat makers in the audience. Next time, I’ll try to lure one or two them onto the podium to share their views with us. No promises, though! (See pages 30-34)
While that is all good and promising, the last couple of months have not been so kind to the PU industry in Europe.
The shortage of TDI was exacerbated by news from BASF that it had produced and supplied contaminated material in October. Fortunately, this was spotted relatively quickly, and caused little more than lost production and some consternation. Two independent analyses confirm that there was no risk to life or health to those of us who work in the business, or to our cus-tomers. There was no reputational damage. (See page 14)
The media, though, is starting to chip away at rigid foam. As I said a couple of months ago, the rigid PU industry will have to work hard to ensure that it retains its licence to operate in the minds of the public.
This follows a high-profile report on the way that companies in the rigid PU sector in the UK interact with regulators on Sky News, a UK satellite news service that has international distribution. (See page 8)
There is nothing wrong with working with regulators: in one sense, there is little point in writing product regulations that would be impossible to meet in the real world. But the average person on the street must be able to see that this is in their interests, and not merely another example of the fox guarding the hen-house.
Companies in the UK rigid foam sector may feel they came under an undue amount of scrutiny in the Sky News piece… but this will not be the last such piece.
While the rigid foamers may have felt the slings and arrows, the report importantly pointed out the way that a significant amount of regulation in the UK build-ing sector has been put in the hands of private companies who compete with each other for work, or in the hands of the builders themselves, who can self-certify a number of things.
Only the increasingly delayed Public Inquiry and continuing criminal investigations by London’s Metropolitan Police will really be able to get at the truth.
comment4 comment www.utech-polyurethane.com
december 2017/january 2018 urethanes technology •international•
Simon RobinsonEditor
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Hennecke buys OMS Group in machinery industry consolidationSt Augustin, Germany – Hennecke, the German machinery company, is purchasing OMS Group of Milan, Italy, in a deal that is expected to close in December 2017.
‘With this purchase, two tech-nological leaders in the polyu-rethane machinery business are joining forces to open up opportu-nities for further growth,’ said Rolf Trippler, Hennecke’s Managing Director.
His view is echoed by Enrico
Lombardini, Chief Executive of OMS. ‘Joining forces will provide further profitable growth,’ he said.
Lombardini and Andrea Mariani, the OMS executive management team, will retain their responsibil-ities after closing, the companies said. They added that jobs in both companies will be maintained.
Trippler added that the com-panies’ product portfolios in the various segments complement each other. ‘We are expanding global technology and market leadership,’ he said.
No price was disclosed.
Popesti, Romania – Italian insulat-ing products manufacturer Isopan has increased its sandwich panel production capacity with the addi-tion of a new line in Romania, the firm said.
The company, headquartered in Trevenzuolo, Verona, is raising capacity at the Bucharest plant by 50% through the expansion of its range of polyurethane and mineral wool metal-clad sandwich panels.
Isopan invested in Romania in response to growing demand for fire reactive and resistant insulat-
ing panels. The result will be faster feedback to market demands and a consequent reduction in order delivery times, the company said.
‘The new investment reflects confidence in Isopan products used in various sectors of the construction market. With this we want to grow and strengthen our leading position,’ explained Isopan Est’s CEO, Toni Pera.
Earlier this year, Isopan, which claims to be the world’s sec-ond-biggest maker of metal insu-lated sandwich panels for build-ings, introduced Leaf technology,
NZ PU foam producer Acma in administration
Isopan expands PU boards in Romania
Upper Hutt, New Zealand – Polyurethane foam component producer Acma Industries has gone into voluntary administration, citing ongoing cashflow problems. Its facility north of Wellington was hit by a large fire in January 2017.
The company employs 40 peo-ple, and produces a range of polyurethane foam components for international markets. It claims to be particularly strong in the devel-opment of innovative foam prod-ucts for the transport industry.
According to the administrators, PwC, the company will continue to trade on a business-as-usual basis, while they assess the options availa-ble to rehabilitate the business.
‘The company’s directors made the difficult decision to put the company into voluntary administra-tion due to ongoing cash flow pressure,’ said administrator John Fisk. ‘The company has been in a loss-making position for some time.’
Pruszynski to acquire PU foam sandwich panel producer• by Jaroslaw AdamowskiWarsaw – Polish construction company Pruszynski has an-nounced plans to take over local company Florian Centrum, manufacturer of PU and PS foam sandwich panels for the construction industry.
Pruszynski is currently await-ing regulatory approval from Poland’s competition watchdog, UOKiK, to buy the firm.
‘Following the acquisition, Florian Centrum will continue is activities as an entity… within the Pruszynski Group,’ the com-pany said in a statement.
Kingspan expands in South AmericaKingscourt, Ireland – Kingspan has bought 51% of Brazil’s Isoleste Constructivos Isotermicos with four production sites in Brazil for an undisclosed sum.
Isoleste employs 360 and has sales forecast for 2017 of BRL 500 m ($ 158 m ) for the 2017 financial year. The firm produces 18 M m2 of insulated panels/year.
The company has locations in Castanhal, east of Belem; Vitoria de Santo Antao on the coast; Anapolis, near Brasilia; Varzea Grande, in the centre of the country and Sao Jose dos Pinhais in the south. Four of the five locations are production site, but it is unclear which.
This is the firm’s third an-nouncement about Latin and South America.
Kingspan acquired 51% of Panelmet, which makes PIR insulat-ed panels in the free trade zone on the outskirts of Variante Cartagena, Colombia, and in early August an-nounced it had started PIR board production in Mexico City.
The value of the planned transaction was not disclosed by Pruszynski. However, under Polish law, the watchdog’s ap-proval is needed for takeovers and mergers of Poland-based companies if the firms involved had aggregate revenues of at least E 1bn worldwide, or E 50m in the domestic market, in the year before the deal.
Pruszynski is based in Warsaw, and it has been active in the coun-try’s construction industry since 1985. The company’s product range includes roofing materi-als, wall construction and facing
materials, aluminium panels, plasterboard and cardboard sys-tems, in addition to PU and PIR sandwich panels.
Currently, the group oper-ates several production facilities in Poland, and also owns sub-sidiaries in Germany, Hungary, Romania, Lithuania and the Czech Republic.
Florian Centrum was set up in 1996 and has its headquar-ters in Kutno, central Poland, where the company also oper-ates its main production facility. It has a second plant in Tymbark, southern Poland.
which it said gives more efficient panels with improved production characteristics.
Leaf technology was developed along with Dow Polyurethanes, and permits the reduction of CO
2 emissions and non-halogenated flame retardants, the company said.
Lower thermal conductivity allows the creation of thinner and lighter coatings, and Leaf man-ufactured panels achieved the highest sandwich panel Euroclas B-sld0 fire resistance standards, according to Isopan.
Trippler Lombardini
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Turkish systems house, Derkim in Uzbek jv • By Jaroslaw AdamowskiUrgut, Uzbekistan – Derkim Polyurethane Urgut, a Turkish-Uzbek joint venture, has unveiled plans to open a new PU produc-tion facility in Urgut, 350 km (190 m) southwest of Tashkent.
According to local news web-site UzDaily.uz, the factory will have 15,000 tonne/year capacity. As part of the investment, Derkim Polyurethane Urgut is to create more than 65 new jobs, accord-ing to information obtained by the site.
The plant is to be located in an Uzbek free economic zone, en-suring preferential tax treatment for the joint venture.
‘In the second part of this year, the joint Uzbek-Turkish company… is to launch production of polyure-thane,’ said Gayat Abdurahmatov, the deputy director of the Urgut free economic zone.
The joint venture’s Turkish partner, Derkim Poliuretan, is an Istanbul-based company that dis-tributes and produces PU systems for a number of industries, includ-ing the construction, packaging, energy, footwear and other sectors.
In addition to Istanbul, the com-pany operates facilities in Izmir and Gaziantep, both in Turkey, accord-ing to data from Derkim Poliuretan. The company says it has produced PU since 2014.
IMA ‘disappointed’ with Sky News Grenfell reportLondon – The UK Insulation Manufacturers’ Association (IMA, formerly BRUFMA), has described the focus on the role of insulation in the Grenfell Tower fire in a Sky TV report as ‘disappointing’.
The report: Grenfell: Britain’s fire safety crisis aired in the UK on the evening of 27 November, and three times on 28 November.
The Association, which changed its name from BRUFMA on 6 November, said: ‘It is disappointing that recent reports in the media regarding the Grenfell tragedy have focused almost exclusively on insulation, without taking into account the full construction and fire safety of the building. IMA be-lieves that this type of reporting is misplaced and that the public en-quiry should be completed before any conclusions are made.’
The Sky TV report focused on the role that companies play in setting standards in construction.
IMA explained: ‘[The] Insulation Manufacturers Association, like other trade associations, offers a voice for the industry and works with many government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on the improvement of building regulations and stand-ards. This is done within the usual public channels such as attending meetings and stakeholder events organised by relevant Government departments, submitting respons-es to consultation documents, membership of relevant stand-ards committees and liaising with other trade associations.
‘It is standard practice for the whole construction industry to have products and systems
assessed and certified across a broad range of tests, including fire tests. Our industry continues to invest in testing and research with a wide range of test insti-tutes and notified bodies, all of which charge for their services, to ensure that products meet all the relevant regulations and standards.’ Grenfell: a complex tragedy
Nantong, Jiangsu – Korea’s SKC is planning to set up polyure-thane auto parts facilities at its existing China site in Nantong, Jiangsu province, the company said in a press release.
The project was approved by SKC’s board in September, with KRW 35bn ($32m) investment earmarked. Construction is expected to start in January 2018, and it should come on stream in February 2019. The facilities’ capacity is yet to be disclosed.
SKC also plans to set up a wet chemicals joint venture with KRW 45bn investment and is mulling an auto glass film joint venture.
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Resilient Huntsman benefits from production consistency in Q3 The Woodlands, Texas – Hunts-man’s MDI plants in Caojing, China; Geismar, Louisiana, and Rozenburg, the Netherlands ‘are all operating at capacity and have been for the past quarter or so’, said Peter Huntsman
Peter Huntsman, speaking in a Q3 conference call in late October, added that the polyurethanes business segment had recorded adjusted earnings before taxation, depreciation and amortisation of $ 254 m in the quarter, up 43%. Volumes were up 8% compared to the same period in 2016, he added.
In this segment, revenue in the third quarter of 2017 was $ 1.2 bn, compared with $ 891 m in the same 2016 quarter, up 34%.
Across the business, now that
the Venator titanium dioxide and additives business has been spun off, the polyurethane segment was a major contributor to rev-enue, which totalled $2.169 bn in the third quarter of 2017, and EBITDA, which reached $340m in the quarter
Peter Huntsman suggested that volume growth may slow slightly in the fourth quarter, but that margins would remain ro-bust. This is because of the policy by which the company has cho-sen to ‘deselect the less stable margin component business in favour of long-term, more stable differentiated MDI systems’, he said.
‘These differentiated MDI sys-tems,’ he continued, ‘had a 16% year-over-year improvement in
volumes globally. Strong ongoing global demand combined with continued tight supply conditions advanced favourable price dy-namics in component MDI in both China and Europe.’
Peter Huntsman added that, currently, globally operating rates
Peter Huntsman: World MDI is ‘at capacity’
Huntsman: looking for downstream bolt-ons post Clariant non-merger The Woodlands, Texas – Peter Huntsman said that although the merger with Clariant is off (see story page 13) his company could still receive payments from the Swiss polymer additives busi-ness, and there are other growth options.
Speaking at Huntsman’s Q3 conference call Peter Huntsman said: ‘If Clariant enters into a deal
within the next 18 months to sell the majority of its masterbatch in pigments businesses, then we are owed $60 m. Likewise, if Clariant within 18 months enters into a transaction or a series of transac-tions to sell greater than 35% of the business assets, as measured by revenue or net income, then we will be owed $60 m.
He continued: ‘If this sales
FXI changes ownership Media, Pennsylvania – FXI, a US flexible foam compa-ny, is to be sold by owners MatlinPatterson Global Advisers and Black Diamond Capital Management to One Rock, a private equity firm.
No financial terms for the deal, which is slated to com-plete in the fourth quarter of 2017, were revealed.
FXI operates 18 facilities across the US and Mexico. Its current management team, led by CEO John Cowles, will re-main in place if all goes to plan.
One Rock managing partner, Scott Spielvogel said he was attracted to the unique position-ing of FXI in the marketplace, its reputation and its product lineup. He also promised to im-prove the company’s products and grow the business.
Cowles said: ‘We are confi-dent that our expertise, com-bined with the resources of One Rock, will allow us to continue to build our product pipeline.’
Huntsman considers building PU machinery factoryNew Orleans, Louisiana – Huntsman is planning to start production of Tecnoelastomeri machinery in the US, Steve Burns, vice president Americas, of Huntsman’s polyurethane divi-sion said on the sidelines of the CPI meeting in New Orleans in early October.
‘We are trying to put a capital plan together to make the same products here in North America that are made in Italy,’ he said.
The departure for Huntsman has not been considered lightly.
results from a pre-termination proposal or inquiry driven by White Tale’s actions or communication, we believe we’re owed an addi-tional $150 m. And just through all that, I don’t see any scenario where Huntsman would need to pay any part of the $210 m… if there are any meaningful divestitures here, I believe that Huntsman is entitled to some funds.’
Steve Burns: making machinery
Burns explained that they had exhaustively searched, but don’t have any available asset within
the Huntsman network that could make precision polyurethane ma-chinery of this type.
Burns agreed that this would see Huntsman enter a different business area with a different business model, but said, ‘It’s attractive, we’ve done well with footwear and TPUs.’
A location for the facility has yet to be decided, but two pos-sible places could be Ringwood, Illinois or Geismar, Louisiana. Production in Italy could also be expanded, he suggested.
are very tight, with global effec-tive operating rates above 95% capacity utilisation. ‘Industry demand for MDI is growing at about 6% globally on an annu-alised basis. We believe industry manufacturing capacity will grow approximately 4% annually from 2016 through 2021.’
He ruled out any short-term greenfield expansions, adding that they do expect some ‘brownfield expansion and debottlenecks in-cluding our own, Caojing, China, facility of 240,000 tons of stated capacity’.
He warned that because there are fewer, larger lines being built, ‘single plant outages will poten-tially impact the market, especially when capacity is operating at greater than 90% utilisation’.
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US furniture flammability legislation proposedWashington, DC – Proposed leg-islation that would simplify the legislative landscape for furniture flammability requirements in the US if it is passed into law has been backed by the American Home Furnishings Alliance (AHFA).
The Safer Occupancy Furniture Flammability Act (SOFFA), intro-duced as a House bill by Virginia Republican Morgan Griffith, proposes that the US Consumer Product Safety Commission
(CPSC) should adopt California Technical Bulletin 117-2013 as a federal flammability standard. This TB covers performance stand-ards and methods for smoulder resistance.
‘I was pleased to introduce this legislation creating a clear federal standard on furniture flamma-bility,’ Griffith said. ‘If enacted, furniture manufacturers would continue to make safe products without worrying about a tangle
of varying state regulations.’AHFA CEO Andy Counts says
that the bill would provide a workable solution to a 40-year stalemate at CPSC. ‘TB 117-2013 is a proven and effective standard that helps protect consumers and reduces the risk of upholstered furniture fires,’ he said.
‘By making TB 117-2013 a national standard, we can ensure that all upholstered residential furniture sold in the United
NAFRA looks to challenge CPSC over ‘political’ FR guidanceNew Orleans, Louisiana – The North American Flame Retardant Alliance (NAFRA) is examining how to challenge recent guidance from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC) around flame retardants in polyurethane foam, said spokesman Jay West.
West was responding to a question from the floor following his paper at the CPI Meeting held in New Orleans from 2-4 October 2017.
West continued that NAFRA’s parent, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) is looking at the CSPC’s earlier decisions and ex-amining questions such as ‘have they ever used this kind of author-ity before?’
West said: ‘We’re still very much in an exploratory phase in terms of the specific routes of remedy we might go through.’
‘It’s a very active, fluid situation right now,’ he added.
The CPSC is an independent agency within the US Federal
States meets a rigorous fire safety threshold. SOFFA would mandate the best test methods and con-struction standards we have today but would not prohibit CPSC from future rulemaking if new fire safety technologies become avail-able,’ Counts added.
Andy Counts: end stalemate
Lee Salamone: its political
Government. CPSC was created in 1972 by Congress under the Consumer Product Safety Act and began operating in 1973. Its mission is to protect the public against unreasonable risks of in-juries associated with consumer products.
The US CPSC’s split guidance to ban the use of halogenated flame retardants in polyurethane foam was ‘political’, said Lee Salamone, speaking on the fring-es of the CPI annual meeting.
The CPSC decision was unexpected.
Arlene Blum, whose Green Science Policy Institute petitioned for the CPSC to adopt CAL TB 117 flammability standard along with
the American Home Furnishings Alliance in 2015 wrote in an email ‘many years of hard work paid off when, to our amazement, the CPSC commissioners voted to enact the petition’.
It was an unusual decision, Salamone added, because having issued the guidance, the CPSC then ordered that a Chronic Hazard Advisory Panel should be convened to examine the risks of these flame retard-ants in polyurethane foam.
She added that the staff position was that this should not be adopted, partly on grounds that the test is difficult to perform and it is difficult to reproduce.
Rhode Island, Maine institute flame retardant bans Providence, Rhode Island – Rhode Island is the latest state to institute a ban on the use of certain organohalogen flame re-tardants in upholstered furniture and bedding. The ban is set to come into force in July 2019.
The law will regulate the use of any flame retardants that con-tain carbon–bromine or carbon–chlorine bonds and are added to foam, plastic or textiles. Penta-BDE and octa-BDE have already been restricted in the state since 2007.
The state joins a growing list
that have introduced regulations restricting or banning flame retard-ants in consumer products. Laws are already in place in California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Washington DC.
The Rhode Island law follows hot on the heels of an even wider ban that will soon be in place in Maine. After lobbying from envi-ronmentalists, and also firefighters who claimed they were experi-encing elevated cancer rates, a bill was passed to prohibit the
sale and distribution of residential upholstered furniture containing more than 0.1% of any flame retardant chemical or mixture of them.
The Republican governor of Maine, Paul LePage, tried to veto the bill. ‘By prohibiting the use of all chemicals, this bill eliminates the ability for industry to innova-tively develop substances used as flame retardants in furniture,’ LePage claimed. ‘Not only does this bill create additional red tape for businesses, but it could also lead to Maine consumers having to pay higher prices for furniture.’
His veto was overturned on a non-partisan basis by a large margin in the state legislature.
Governor LePage: opposed the bill
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Icynene spends $160m on Lapolla, buys Isolat too Mississauga, Ontario – Icynene, the Canadian-headquartered manu-facturer and distributor of one-step spray foam insulation products, is to acquire Houston, Texas-based Lapolla in an all-cash deal worth $160 million.
Icynene is owned by San Francisco-based private equity business FFL Partners.
The deal will create a compa-ny that serves the international market for new residential, com-mercial, remodelling and spe-cialty non-construction insulation projects.
‘Together, as one company, Lapolla and Icynene will have more resources to fully serve our respective customers and positions both companies for
long-term, sustained growth,’ said Mark Sarvary, Icynene’s president and CEO.
In a second deal, the compa-ny’s Belgium-based subsidiary Icynene Europe has acquired polyurethane insulation distributor
Isolat France. The French compa-ny was the first to obtain CSTB certification for floors and walls.
‘The acquisition reinforces Icynene’s commitment to growth within the European market with direct sales to contractors,’ said Bertrand Lauret, managing direc-tor of Icynene Europe, Africa and the Middle East. ‘Operating across two dozen European countries, Icynene Europe will now have a comprehensive product mix of open- and closed-cell spray foam insulation products that we will manufacture in Europe.’
Sarvary added, ‘Europe is a key strategic focus for Icynene, and we will continue to pursue growth within the region, both organically and with targeted acquisitions.’
Andy Counts: end stalemate
Bertrand Laurent: Committed
Canadian foam price fixing lawsuits settledToronto, Ontario – Following the recent out-of-court settlement of a class action price-fixing law-suit in Canada, consumers who bought Canadian-made flexible polyurethane foam, eligible foam products or carpet underlay be-tween 1999 and 2012 can now claim compensation for having been overcharged.
The C$38 m ($30 m) class action settlement was agreed by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the Supreme Court of British Columbia and the Superior Court of Quebec in three parallel lawsuits. The lawsuits claimed that the defendant manufacturers con-spired to fix the price at which flex-ible polyurethane foam was sold in Canada and worldwide, from at least 1 January 1999 until 2012.
Tempur Sealy feels the uncomfortable effect of Mattress Firm termination in Q3Lexington Kentucky — Tempur Sealy International experienced a 12.9% fall in sales during the third quarter of 2017 to $ 725 m as a result of hurricanes and the termination of an agreement with Steinhoff’s subsidiary, bedding retailer Mattress Firm.
In the third quarter of 2016, Tempur Sealy sold $832 m worth of products. The company said that compared with the 2016 quarter, in the third quarter of 2017 there was a 17.2% fall in North American sales, which was partially offset by a 7% increase
in the international business segment.
Operating income fell by 28% to $94.6 m compared to $131 m in the third quarter of 2016. The company said that this was caused by the impact of hurricanes in two of its largest markets in Texas and Florida.
Tempur Sealy internation-al CEO Scott Thompson said, ‘The team generated one of the highest cash flow quarters in our company’s history, despite several challenges including a significant change in our distribution net-
work, three hurricanes and com-modity inflation.
Thompson: Pleased with cash flow
Arsenal sells Accella Performance Materials to CarlisleNew York — Arsenal Capital Partners has agreed to sell US specialty polyurethanes company Accella Performance Materials to Carlisle for $670 m.
Headquartered in Missouri, Accella has sales of around $430 m and operates 10 facilities and seven R&D laboratories in the US, Germany, and China.
Roy Seroussi, a principal at Arsenal, said, ‘Since our initial
investment in 2012, Accella’s rev-enue and EBITDA increased by 7x and 8x, respectively, through a fo-cused organic growth strategy and nine strategic acquisitions. The company has become a market leader in several rapidly growing end markets, such as spray foam insulation, as well as roofing solu-tions and polyurethane truck bed liners.’
The growth of Accella first
came to attention when it pur-chased IPS polymer systems in March 2015, changed its name from MultiDash Corp in May 2014, and rationalised its portfo-lio. Then its parent Arsenal Capital purchased three PU businesses in two days in September 2015. In March 2016, Quadrant’s spray foam business was added to the company. In June 2016, Bullet Liner joined the portfolio.
Chemours, Honeywell challenge EPA SNAP decisionWilmington, Delaware — Chemours and Honeywell are appealing against a legal decision that the EPA was wrong to use SNAP to force HFC replacement in polyurethane applications.
Chemours believes that the legal basis of the Significant New Alternatives Policy SNAP 20 rule was well-founded and that the court’s ruling exceeded its jurisdic-tion. The ruling effectively ‘invali-dating a decades-old EPA regula-tion and failing to take into account the EPA’s original directive to ensure that safe alternatives are used to replace ozone-depleting substances’, said Chemours.
The court’s August ruling turned on whether the EPA could use its significant new alternatives policy (SNAP) program, a Clean Air Act program geared towards phasing out ozone-depleting substances, to replace HFC that were used to replace earlier ozone-depleting blowing agents.
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Kingspan passes through price rises and drives sales growth in Q3Kingscourt, Ireland — Kingspan had growth in sales in the nine months to September, with an increase of 19% to € 2.7bn, and sales in Q3 were up 17% com-pared to the year-earlier periods, according to a trading statement.
Sales in the insulated panel segment were up 13% in the third quarter of 2017, Kingspan said, ‘ow-ing to the pass through of input-re-lated inflation. Mainland European sales were solid in most markets and notably positive in France’.
‘In the UK,’ Kingspan said, ‘we have experienced a sense
of near-term indecision around order placement. However, our
future activity tracker remains modestly ahead of prior year.’
Insulation board sales were up 16% in Q3 as, again, input price rises were passed on. Growth in the company’s Kooltherm phenol-ic boards continued to grow, and was ‘particularly positive in the UK, Ireland, Western Europe and the Nordics’.
Kingspan expects its input pric-es to continue to rise in the fourth quarter, albeit less pronounced as price rises reach their peak, it said. The company expects to achieve profit growth of around 10%, or € 375m, if current exchange rates remain stable.
Recticel grows revenue in Q3Brussels – Recticel saw sales up 11.9% in the third quarter of 2017, to € 356m as the company passed on higher prices and benefited from greater automotive demand.
CEO Olivier Chapelle said his firm had faced ‘very challenging raw material supply conditions’, adding that prices have ‘reached new record levels in the third quar-ter… MDI supply remained insuf-ficient to cover market demand’. This has limited his company’s ability to ‘fulfil the demand from customers of rigid insulation pan-els; no substantial improvement is expected in the short-term’.
His commercial department has ‘continued to take the ap-propriate measures to safeguard profit margins’.
Chapelle added that following the
Kingspan insulation sales rise
Carbon4PUR Spire project for rigid polyols from flue gas launches Fos-sur-Mere, France — Unmodified flue gas from steel production is to be used by a new a consortium of 14 partners led by Covestro in an EU Spire project to make rigid polyols.
‘Together, we are on the path to a crucial innovation: waste gas mixtures from the steel industry can provide carbon for chemical processes and ultimately be used to produce insulation materials and coatings,’ explained Marcus Steilemann, the Covestro board
member responsible for innova-tion marketing and sales.
The European Union is support-ing the project, called Carbon4PUR, under the auspices of its SPIRE programme; this is a European public-private partnership, ded-icated to innovation in resource and energy efficiency in the pro-cess industries.
The project will receive €8m in funding over three years. Industrial partners will add finan-cial contributions to this.
Marcus Steilemann
The project aims to use mix-es of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide generated during steel production to produce polyols for polyurethane-based insulation materials and coatings.
The recovery project con-sortium includes academic and institutional partners such as RWTH Aachen University; TU Berlin; Dechema; Imperial College London; the Universities of Ghent and Leiden; the French Atomic and Renewable Energy
Commission; South Pole Carbon Asset Management, The Port of Marseille and PNO Innovations. The press release suggests that Covestro could supply polyols from the project to Recticel.
supply of contaminated TDI by BASF (see page 14) his firm ‘reserved its rights and expects to recover in due course all damage from the supplier or insurance companies’.
Total sales for the third quarter of 2017 were € 356m, compared with € 318 m in the 2016 quar-ter. Sales in flexible foam were up 3.2% at € 149m, insulation was up 13.8% at € 72.4m, and au-tomotive sales at € 84.1m in the third quarter of 2017 were up 22% compared with the 2016 quarter. Sales in the company’s bedding segment fell by 6.9% to just under € 65m in the third quarter of 2017.
Olivier Chapelle
PU-graphene shoe soles with better propertiesSan Colombano, Italy – Italian shoe company Fadel and Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, one of the members of the EU Graphene Flagship, have collaborated on a new graphene-containing polyure-thane for footwear applications.
Flakes that contain several layers of graphene are added to shoe soles, giving improved heat disper-sion, waterproofing and antibacte-rial properties.
‘We have improved thermal properties’ with around 1% addition-al graphene said Vittorio Pellegrini, director of IIT Graphene Labs.
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KM launches three new quick colour change mix headsMunich, Germany — KraussMaffei has introduced three new mix heads allowing polyurethane processors to quickly change colours in coatings, foams and composite systems.
The first development, called linear mixing head MK5-2+1K, is designed for the company’s ColorForm process. This allows for a very fast die change, the compa-ny said. To do this, an easy-to-re-place module is mounted on the mixing head, which injects dye directly into the mixing chamber.
The second development, des-ignated MK 10/15 ULP-2K +4, is a transfer mixing head developed to simplify dye changes during the production of semi-rigid, rigid or flexible foams, the company said.
The new mixing head makes it possible to feed up to four dyes directly and independently into the mixing chamber.
The third development is a line of mixing heads for use in struc-tural component spraying. In this process, a layer is made up of fibre mats and honeycomb cores which
are sprayed with unreinforced PU. These are then inserted into a mould and pressed into shape. This gives components that are lightweight and strong, KM added.
The newly developed noz-zle-changing component makes it possible to equip spray mixing heads with flat-fan nozzles to coat large areas, and air-assisted circular jets for components with challenging geometry.
KM said that the develop-ment makes it possible to fit spray mixing head with both
types of nozzle increasing their flexibility and reducing cycle times. Sebastian Schmidhuber, head of RPM Research and Development added that invest-ment costs are reduced because only one mixing head is required and there is no need for the hydraulic switchover unit that would otherwise be required.
Huntsman-Clariant merger offThe Woodlands, Texas — Clariant and Huntsman jointly announced on 27 October that they had mu-tually terminated the proposed merger of equals that had been announced last May. The deci-sion was unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of the two companies.
Clariant confirmed that White Tale Holdings had in-creased its stake in Clariant to more than 20%. This follows earlier mandatory notifications by White Tale Holdings to the Swiss Stock Exchange.
In a joint statement, Peter Huntsman, CEO of Huntsman, and Hariolf Kottmann, CEO of Clariant, stated: ‘The proposed merger would have been in the long-term best interests of all of our shareholders. However, given the continued accumula-tion of Clariant shares by activist investor White Tale Holdings and its opposition to the transaction, which is now supported by some other shareholders, we believe that there is simply too much uncertainty as to whether Clariant will be able to secure the two-thirds shareholder approval.’
More Huntsman news P9
KM’s MK5-2+1K mix head
Perstorp specialties division sales up 19% in Q3 2017Malmo, Sweden — Perstorp’s specialties and solutions division, which includes specialty polyols and the company’s Capa busi-ness, had sales of SEK 758 m ($90m) in the third quarter of 2017, up 19% compared with SEK 638 m in the third quarter of 2016.
At the same time, earnings be-fore interest taxation depreciation and amortisation rose by 4.6% to SEK 179 m, compared with SEK 171 m in the third quarter of 2016.
The company said that the strong organic growth in the capro-lactones business unit helped to drive the numbers forward. However, margins fell because of the product and customer mix, and also higher raw material prices. The specialties and solu-tions business accounts for 23% of the company’s total sales.
Overall, Perstorp had sales of SEK 3.4 bn in the third quarter of 2017, compared to SEK 2.8 bn in the same period in 2016.
Earnings across the company rose from SEK 517 m in the first quar-ter of 2016 to SEK 676 m in the third quarter of 2017.
Perstorp CEO Jan Secher said of the first nine months of 2017, ‘General demand continues to be high and coherent across all three regions – EMEA, Americas and APAC, but the supply situation to become somewhat less tight. The volatility in the raw material prices keeps us on our toes in terms of pricing in many areas.’
Grammer nine months sales up 5.8%Amberg, Germany – Sales at au-tomotive interiors firm Grammer rose by 5.8% in the first nine months of 2017 compared with the prior year period, to E 1.34bn.
The company’s earnings be-fore interest and tax rose by 23% to E 45.8m despite ‘negative
currency effects and extraordinary expenses connected with an at-tempted change in control as well as additional uncovered develop-ment and project expenses arising from a shortfall in new orders’, the company said.
‘Unfortunately, the restraint
shown by premium German OEMs in awarding new contracts also continued in the third quarter of 2017,’ the company added.
Grammer said it has improved profitability, and EBIT margin has grown to 4.4% compared to 3.8% in the first nine months of 2016.
FoamPartner helps develop phosphate flame retardantDubendorf, Switzerland — Foam-Partner has helped develop a new phosphorus-based flame retardant for flexible foam, with help from Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (EMPA).
The new flame retardant, called EDA-DOPOm based on 9,10-dihy-dro-10-oxa-phosphaphenanthrene oxide, can enable foams to reach the UL94 HB classification.
EMPA added that it has developed a‘
particularly economical and ecological synthesis process, which also simplifies the production of other DOPO deriva-tives. This process is being used by Austria’s Metadynea, which has pro-duced 1.5 tonne of the flame retardant.
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Contaminated TDIcauses flexible foam production problems
Ludwigshafen, home of BASF
Ludwigshafen, Germany – Around 2,500 tonnes of BASF Lupranate TDI contaminated with di-chlorobenzene caused production interruptions across the European flexible foam sector in October this year.
Production was halted at mattress companies, including EVE Sleep and Slientnight in the UK, while the situation was in-vestigated. In continental Europe, FoamPartner and Recticel made announcements that they had stopped and then restarted pro-duction following investigations.
In a statement Recticel said once the alarm was raised that its ‘primary concern is the safety of its employees, of the employees of its customers, and of end-consumers. Therefore, Recticel immediately stopped production and deliveries at the affected sites, and has taken all required safety measures’.
All affected sites have restarted production with TDI that conforms to specification, the company confirmed.
It added that it has worked closely with its customers, and ‘completed a traceability exercise to identify all the affected foam deliveries’.
FoamPartner said it restarted production at its Wolfhausen, Switzerland, plant on 18 October, 12 days after halting on 6 October. The restarts followed atmospheric tests which showed that if dichlorobenzene from contaminated BASF TDI were present, it was below the thresh-old value.
BASF said that it warned ‘most affected customers’ by telephone on 4 October, and sent letters to all the affected customers on 5 October 2017. It delayed mak-ing a public statement until 11 October ‘as we wanted to have a fact-based discussion with the customers who were directly im-pacted’, the firm said.
However, several foamers con-tacted by Urethanes Technology International, but who wished to remain anonymous, expressed their disappointment at the way in which BASF handled the situation.
In a statement, BASF said that TDI from Ludwigshafen ‘pro-duced between 25 August and 29 September 2017, contained a significantly higher concentration of dichlorobenzene. Since then, the production process has been changed to prevent further fluc-
tuations in quality’. It added that around 7,500 tonnes of TDI were affected.
The company added that it be-lieved 2,500 tonnes of the batch had been distributed.
As October progressed, two independent bodies agreed with BASF’s assessment that the risk posed by foam made from the contaminated TDI was low. BASF’s position that that foam produced from its recent batch of contam-inated TDI had dichlorobenzene levels ‘clearly below 1ppm’ which it said was the ‘limit for workplace exposure’.
EuroPUR, which commissioned Thomas Schupp, a professor of the University of Applied Sciences of Munster, Germany, to test the foam, and separately the Bavarian state office for health and food safety, supported BASF’s conclusions.
Conzzeta, FoamPartner’s par-ent said in a statement: ‘Specific
questions in connection with BASF’s take-back of products that have already been delivered to the retail chain remain to be clar-ified. Conzzeta understands that, as the polluted substances and products are being taken back, all direct costs will be borne by the manufacturer. It is not yet possible to provide a comprehensive as-sessment of the damage suffered or indirect consequences.’
In response for more clarity from foamers, BASF added that ‘compensation topics will be clari-fied with our customers. Recall of furniture products already in retail outlets, if any, is a matter for the manufacturers’.
According to London’s Daily Telegraph Silentnight said: ‘Following this thorough investi-gation, we can confirm that there has been no impact whatsoever on the quality or safety of any products manufactured at our Silentnight Group sites.’
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Russia’s polyurethane industry emerges from economic crisis
Manturov: Considering subsidies
Russian government in talks with big five isocyanate producersMoscow – The Russian govern-ment is planning to subsidise isocyanate production to reduce supply problems, and has contact-ed leading producers, said trade minister, Denis Manturov.
Russian polyurethane produc-ers say that it is unprofitable to make isocyanate in the country, but that state subsidies may change the situation.
According to state plans, state subsidies and the companies’ own funds could enable the establishment of 400 kT/year of production of isocyanates in Russia.
In addition to domestic pro-ducers, the production of raw materials could be established by polyurethanes majors operating in Russia, as the government has already started talks with them.
The exact value of subsidies were expected to be announced in late 2017. The Russian minis-ter of industry and trade, Denis Manturov, said the talks are cur-rently underway with Covestro, BASF, Huntsman, Dow Izolan and Wanhua.
Manturov, however, has also added these companies are not interested in investing in plants below 300 kT/year. This would be larger than Russian demand for all polyurethanes in 2016.
A few years ago, Sibur, a leading Russian petrochemical producer, declared its intention to establish isocyanate production if the domestic consumption of polyurethanes in Russia reached 600 kT/year.
Production of polyurethanes in Russia has risen from 180 kT/year
in 2004 to around 275 kT/year at the moment and the leaders in the consumption of polyure-thanes – construction, furniture industry, pipe insulation, and the automotive industry are in crisis.
Local producers and analysts contacted by UTECH-polyurethane.com confirmed that a shortage of
raw materials is the most pressing current problem for the Russian industry.
Dovid Aronovich, deputy head of the polymer adhesives de-partment of the Russian Polymer Research Institute, one of Russia’s leading research institutions in the field of plastics and polyure-thanes, said: ‘At present, Russia experiences a shortage of domes-tic isocyanates production, almost 100% of which is imported from abroad.
‘The collapse of the USSR in 1991 resulted in the suspension of production of polyurethanes in Russia, and the loss of the needed production technologies. As a re-sult, we do not have modern tech-nologies for obtaining isocyanate, which is in great demand among local polyurethane producers.’
Russian Sintez OKA moves into PU production
Moscow -- The polyurethane in-dustry in Russia is on the verge of big changes as the economy recovers from its crisis, domestic demand grows and companies restart investment.
For example, the FomLine Group of Companies, one of Russia’s largest polyurethane producers, planned to launch a flexible polyurethane foam plant in Kuznetsk, Penza by the end of 2017. The new plant will have the capacity to produce 80 kT/year. It will be located within Kuznetsk Technopark, one of the largest industrial zones in central Russia. It will supply the local furniture cluster.
Initially, implementation of the project was planned for the summer of 2016. However, the Russian polyurethane industry was quiet in 2016, and the launch was postponed until the end of 2017.
At the same time, in addition to FomLine, Vega is building a fa-
cility to make polyurethane foam for mattresses and upholstered furniture in the Krasnodar re-gion. It is expected that this will be commissioned in the middle of 2018.
Analysts at the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade said polyu-rethane industry projects have restarted thanks to help from the state, which has significantly increased in recent years.
According to ministry data, in 2016 the government provided subsidies of RUB 2.4 bn ($40 m) to leading Russian producers, and that figure will be matched by the end of the 2017.
Head of the department of the chemical and technological complex of Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade, Alexander Orlov, said the funds subsidised R&D, compensation for interest payable on investments and the promotion of domestic producers in the international arena.
The support was provided
within the existing state strategy, known as ‘For the development chemical and petrochemical com-plex in Russia for the period until 2030’.
The financial crisis in Russia, caused by Western sanctions, has resulted in the re-distribution of polyurethane consumption in the country.
Consumption in agriculture and refrigeration equipment has increased, because of the deval-uation of the rouble. This made imports expensive and spurred production of domestic equiva-lents of imported products, ob-servers said.
Alexander Dmitriev, presi-dent of the Russian National Association Manufacturers of pan-els from polyurethane foam, said the consumption of polyurethane in Russia will continue to grow. This is being driven by higher energy efficiency of buildings un-der construction which will need more polyurethane foam panels.
Dzerzhinsk, Russia – Russian chemical group Sintez OKA has established a new subsid-iary to make rigid and flexible polyurethane foam systems.
Sintez OKA-Polyurethane is to manufacture a range of ‘rigid and highly elastic polyurethane foam systems for the automotive industry, construction and other in-dustries, such as adhesives, sealants, compounds and elastomers’, the company said in a statement.
Sintez OKA says the sub-sidiary will operate a new facility that will be the group’s sixth production unit. The val-ue of the planned investment was not disclosed.
In addition to the domestic market, the Russian company says it exports its prod-ucts to about 30 countries worldwide.
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Tosoh benefits from MDI price hikes in H1 results Tokyo – Sales at Japanese MDI producer Tosoh grew by 16% to JPY3917 bn ($3.454 bn) in the first half of 2017, driven in part by higher isocyanate prices.
The company recorded an operating income of JPY 545 bn in the first half of 2017, itself up 32% on the prior year period.
Tosoh said that prices of mon-omeric MDI had increased from about $1,704/tonne in the first
half of 2016 to about $2,652/tonne in the first half of 2017, a rise of $948/tonne. Polymeric MDI prices had increased from $1,228 to $2,177/ tonne in the same period.
Sales in Tosoh’s urethane busi-ness grew from JPY 489 bn in the first half of 2016 to JPY 651 bn in the first half of 2017. The firm is predicting annual urethane sales of JPY 1.32bn for the full year.
Overall, the company’s chlor-al-kali business segment, which includes olefins, polyolefins and cement, had sales of JPY 1,560 bn in the first half of 2017, and sales of JPY 1,226 bn in the first half of 2016.
Operating income in the chlor-alkali business segment was JPY 249 bn in the first half of 2017, compared with JPY 134 bn in the equivalent 2016 half.
Manali to raise fundsChennai, India – The board and shareholders of Manali Petrochemicals, a polyol production company, has approved a plan to raise up to $50m.
The proposal, which gained shareholder approval in December, gives management wide leeway to issue ADRs/global depository receipts/convertible bonds in rupee or other currencies or more shares.
It also gives management considerable room to ‘enhance business activities both in domestic and overseas market, through the acquisition of existing companies, setting up new manufacturing infrastructure’, as well as to spend the money it raises on product development and introduction.
According to a filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange, a Manali board committee has been set up to decide how much to raise and what to do with the cash that is raised.
Meiling adds investment to Pakistan refrigerator JVLahore, Pakistan – China’s appli-ance maker Meiling and Pakistan’s appliance distributor Ruba Group are to add $2.6m investment to their refrigerator joint venture in Lahore, Pakistan.
The plant, with 160,000 unit/year capacity, came on stream in July 2015 as UTECH-polyurethane.com reported at the time.
According to a stock exchange filing, $1.5m will be used in the
plant’s cabinet foaming project to raise its manufacturing capability
Sheela sales up 8.6% in H1 2018New Delhi, India — Consolidated sales at Sheela Foam rose by 8.6% to INR 9.44 bn ($ 146 m) in the first half of its 2018 finan-cial year and has introduced a new range of luxury mattresses.
However, the cost of materi-als rose 16.8% to INR 4.8bn in that half, from INR 4.1bn in the first half of 2016. The company reported a profit before tax of IRN 913 m in the 2017 half, compared with INR 951 in the first half of 2016.
Sheela said the TDI price had accelerated in the second quarter, rising by 31%. This offset benefits from the reduced excise duty paid on the sale of products, from INR 715 m in the first half of 2016 to INR 391 m in the first half of 2017 – a drop of 45%.
The company experienced a growth in revenue from INR 4.21 bn in the 2016 quarter to INR 4.86 bn which, Sheela said, ‘was achieved despite the subdued demand in the months of July and August due to the implemen-tation of GST’.
Sheela said that revenue from Joyce foam, its Australian opera-tion, of INR 770m in the quarter was up INR 30m on the second half of 2016.
Trial sales of the Sheela’s Starlite economy model mattress, launched in Northern India, had been successful, and it will be in-troduced into other parts of India over the remainder of the finan-cial year, the company added.
Sheela Foam introduced a new luxury range of Comfort Cell poly-
urethane-based foam mattresses in October.
The company will make the mattresses in either Surajpur, near Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh or Kalamb, Maharashtra. Each Comfort Cell will cost INR 100,000 (about $ 1,540) for each mattress.
Earlier, in 2016, Sheela launched its Perfect Match foam mattress range. These are customised to consumer preferences and are being manufactured at the Kalamb unit. That product line accounts for about 20% of Sheela’s mattress production.
India’s mattress market is worth INR 150 bn/year ($ 2.3 bn). The cash sector accounts for between 60-70% of that and Sheela Foam may have up to 35% share of the remainder.
PTT invests in Vencorex and Myriant Bangkok – PTT Chemical has con-firmed that its PTTGC subsidiary increased its holdings in Vencorex over the summer, and has funds to invest in Myriant.
In PTT Chemical’s latest filing with the Bangkok Stock Exchange, it confirmed that its PTTGC subsid-iary paid EUR 31.37m for 34% of Vencorex on 21 June 2017. This payment is part of the transaction by which PTT started to buy out Perstorp’s share of their joint ven-ture in Vencorex, a process that was initiated on 28 August 2014.
PTTGC’s total shareholding in Vencorex is now 91%. Vencorex is a speciality diisocyanates produc-er based in Southern France.
PTTGC also confirmed that it had invested $ 6.15 m in Myriant over the summer. Earlier this year, Myriant refocused its activities away from producing biosuccinic acid and towards research and development.
No financial details for Vencorex or Myriant were disclosed in the filing.
and enable speedier response to the local market.
The rest of the $1.1m will be pumped into new product development, focusing on direct cooling and variable frequency products to gain a differentiated advantage, the filing added.
The capital will be injected through the two parties’ subsid-iaries, Zhongshan Changhong Electric and Ruba General Trading.
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Wanhua ups its nine-month sales Yantai, Shandong – Wanhua sales over the first nine month of 2017 were up by 86% to CNY39bn ($5.9bn), according to its Q3 report released earlier in October.
Net profit over the same peri-od jumped 212% to CNY7.8bn.
The company’s polyurethane business contributed to 57% of the total revenue, with 1.37m ton production volume and 1.38m ton sales volume, said the com-pany’s operational statement that was published alongside the report.
Petrochemical business, in-cluding liquefied petroleum gas trade, brought in 28% of the revenue. About 8% came from fine chemicals and new materials, including functional materials and specialty chemicals.
‘MDI supply was short during the period and its price was at its high end, showing a sharp increase year on year,’ said the statement.
The company said that it had almost doubled its MDI price in September compared with a year ago.
Haier and Covestro in cooperation agreementQuingdao, Shandong – Covestro and Haier, a Chinese refrigerator maker, have signed a strategic cooperation agreement.
Covestro and Haier have worked together since 1984, when Bayer, Covestro’s predecessor company, supplied the first raw materials to Haier to insulate its refrigerators. In 2006, the firm became one of the first customers of Bayer’s MDI produced at its integrated site in Shanghai. In 2008, Haier started buying PU systems formulated at the Covestro Shanghai Polymer
Research and Development Center.Wu Yong, General Manager,
China Refrigeration Industry of Haier Group said, ‘The extended partner-ship with Covestro will support our worldwide business strategy. By uti-lising the latest materials solutions in our products in different regions we will meet the upgrading needs of global consumers as well as tak-ing a leading role among Chinese companies going global.’
Haier has global reach, and bought the GE appliance business in 2017.
On the ground in Nanjing
Wu Yong (l) and Covestro’s Daniel Meyer
Wanhua moving into more polymers
Sour
ce: C
oves
tro
BAIC Dymos opens automotive seating site in ChongqingChongqing, China – BAIC Dymos Automotive Systems (Chongqing) inaugurated its 300,000 unit/year automotive seating site in the city’s Yufu Industrial Park earlier this summer.
The company is a 50-50 joint venture between BAIC subsidiary
Beijing Hainachuan Automotive Parts and Korea’s Hyundai Dymos in 2015, said local government website.
The new site covers over 33,000 m2 total area and supplies to Hyundai’s automotive plant in Chongqing, one of China’s automotive sector hubs.
Sour
ce: B
ASF
BASF raises amines capacity in Shanghai Shanghai, China — BASF said it will build a new 21 kT/year spe-cialty amines plant at its Nanjing Chemical Industry Park to come on stream in 2019.
The company said it will produce 1,2-propylene diamine (1,2-PDA) which is used to make elastane fibres; n-octylamine for biocides; and polyetheramine,
used in polyurea coatings.Narayan Krishnamohan, SVP
for intermediates Asia Pacific at BASF said that the new capacity will ‘help us to meet the increas-ing Asia Pacific demand’.
BASF produces the speciality amines at its sites in Ludwigshafen, Germany; Geismar, Louisiana; and Nanjing, China.
TDI maker Dahua posts 10-fold growth in nine-month net profitCangzhou, Hebei – Cangzhou Dahua had more than a 10-fold growth in its net profit over the first nine months of 2017, compared with the first nine months of 2016.
In the first nine months, the company made CNY965m ($146m), according to its Q3 re-port released in October.
Revenue over the same pe-riod rose by 71% year on year to CNY3.1bn. During the period, Dahua sold 115 kT TDI, contrib-uting to 87% of its total revenue.
The average price for TDI during the nine months reached CNY23,600/ton, more than dou-
ble the 2016 nine-month price.‘The TDI market was lukewarm
over the first half of 2017,’ said a company filing. Product price reached its low point for the year in July.
‘With the busy season coming, the TDI plants’ active promotion as well as expected higher fu-ture price driving downstream demand, the supply-demand bal-ance returned to normal and price bounced back,’ the filing added.
In August, the TDI price reached CNY35,000/ton and the company predicts it will remain high with upcoming maintenance at TDI fa-cilities in China and overseas.
Yantai, Shandong – Wanhua filed a regulatory application in October for new ethylene and other feed-stock facilities for its integrated polyurethane project.
Located at the Wanhua Yantai Industrial Park, the project has CNY17.8bn ($2.7bn) investment earmarked and will be funded by capital and loans.
According to the filing, the project includes facilities with 1MT/year capacity for ethylene, 150kT/year for ethylene oxide, 450kT/year for linear low-densi-ty polyethylene, 300kT/year for propylene oxide or 650kT/year for styrene monomer, 50kT/year for butadiene and 400kT/year for polyvinyl chloride.
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asia newslines18 asia newslines www.utech-polyurethane.com
december 2017/january 2018 urethanes technology international
Jiagnxi Tuoyi gives details ofsynthetic leather scheme
Juyuan starts up polyether polyol plantJilin, Jilin – Juyuan Chemical Industry started up its 400kT/year polyether polyol plant in October after a successful trial run, accord-ing to China’s state-owned news agency Xinhuanet.
Located in Jilin’s Chemical Industry Circular Economy Pilot Park, the facilities began construc-tion three years ago with CNY1.2bn ($182m), as UTECH-polyurethane.com reported at the time.
The project licensed technolo-gy from Spain’s Repsol, including that for polyether polyols and grafted polyether.
Juyuan’s parent company, the privately held conglomerate Shenhua Group, has a 300kT/year propylene oxide plant that came on stream three years ago. The new polyol project will make
Shenhua the largest polyurethane feedstock maker in Asia, the Xinhuanet report said.
Shenhua Group also has op-erations in the automotive, real estate and pharmaceutical sec-tors. The report forecasts that Jilin will become the nucleus of the emerging polyurethane sector in China’s north-eastern area.
Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a minority owner of Juyuan’s, claims to have developed carbon dioxide-based, green polyether polyol.
Polyurethane applications made with the polyol, such as automo-tive interiors, are free of aromatic hydrocarbons and aldehydes. The technology is expected to be in use by 2018, said the report.
Songwon adds TPU capacity, launches new grade Suwon, Korea – Songwon plans to add 5 kT/year TPU capacity at its factory in here in the fourth quarter, and has also launched a new TPU grade, the said in a press release.
The company said it will in-crease capacity there to 12 kT/year for wire and cable, film and sheet applications, which will fit into its global product strategy.
‘The second production line in Suwon will enable us to meet the demand for these products and help our customers world-wide to fulfil their end-use re-
quirements,’ said Kyuyeol Lee, leader of the firm’s performance polymers business.
In addition, the company has launched Songstomer P-8185AI, a TPU with ‘excellent anti-blocking properties’. Blown films pro-duced using the material have exceptional strength, the com-pany claims, as well as excellent resistance to abrasion, oil, fuel, solvents and high temperatures.
It added that the films are suitable for use in automotive seating. More about Korea p25-29.
PTT, Sanyo Chemical and Toyota Tsusho to make and distribute polyols in ThailandBangkok — PTT Global Chemical, Sanyo and Toyota Tsusho Corp (TTC) have agreed to form a joint venture, GC Polyols, to make and distribute polyols.
The joint venture will be major-ity-owned by PTTGC with 82.1%. Sanyo will hold 14.9%, and Toyota Tsusho the remaining 3%, PTT GC said in a statement.
PTTGC added that this agree-
ment is ‘an important step for PTTGC in moving towards a pet-rochemical project’ in Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor.
In August 2015 TCC and PTTCG said they would work together on a 200kT/year PO plant in Rayong, Thailand. At the time, a three-way jv would build a 130kT/year polyether polyols plant owned by PTTCG, TCC and Sanyo.
PU tyres roll out on ofo bikes Beijing, China – A two-layer, dual-density polyurethane, punc-ture-proof bike tyre is being used on ofo shareable bicycles, said BASF which makes the polyurethane.
The tyres use Elastopan with a tough, high-grip, wear-resistant outer layer supported by an inner shock-absorbing layer.
This technology can ‘reduce
the need for repairs, extending the service life of our bicycles. It will also reduce the number of bicycles that are abandoned due to damage,’ said Dai Wei ofo CEO.
Ofo claims to have around 10m bicycles in 18 cities in 13 countries. The bikes can be booked and located by smart-phone app.
Kukdo to add China polyol plant Ningbo, Zhejiang – Kukdo Chemical (Kunshan) signed a contract with local authorities in October to build a polyol plant in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, according to the city’s government website.
Located in Ningbo Petro-chemical Economic and Tech-nological Development Zone, the plant has $90 m investment ear-marked for 80kT/year polyether polyol capacity.
Set up in 2002 in Suzhou, Jiangsu, a city near the new plant, Kukdo Chemical (Kunshan) is
a 90-10 joint venture between Korea’s Kukdo Chemical and Japan’s chemical and food com-bine Adeka. The joint venture produces polyols, epoxy resin, hardeners and polyurea.
Kukdo also has four manufac-turing sites in Korea with a total of 540kT/year capacity for epoxy resin and 120kT/year capacity for polyether polyol, said the govern-ment site. Last year Kukdo had KRW 952 bn ($ 851 m) revenue, down by 6% from 2015 accord-ing to the Wall Street Journal.
Ji’an, Jiangxi – Jiangxi Tuoyi Leather has given more details of its plans to build new facilities with 4,000 km/year micro fibre PU leath-er capacity here, pending regulatory approval.
The Jiangxi Tuoyi PU leather project was first reported in UTECH-polyur-ethane.com in February this year.
Located in the city’s Leather Park, Yongxin Industrial Development Zone, the new project covers nearly 35,000 m2 and also contains 500,000
piece/year facility for authentic leather. It’ll create 100 new jobs.
Tuoyi plans to pump CNY 70m ($11m) into the project, including CNY 5m environmental investments, said the project’s environmental filing.
The project will lease production and office buildings from nearby leather maker Dahao. All machinery will be procured by Tuoyi on its own, according to the filing.
The 100 ha Leather Park now has 10 leather makers.
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GLOBAL POLYMER GROUP
Organised by:
In association with:
Maastricht, Netherlands
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
THE LEADING INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION AND CONFERENCEFOR THE GLOBAL POLYURETHANES INDUSTRY
This major three-day conference runs alongside the UTECH Europe 2018 Exhibition. The exhibition will see more than 8,000 attendees from all parts of the PU industry converging on Maastricht to meet with representatives of more than 130 exhibitors. Hundreds of technical specialists will attend the conference, eager to hear about the latest advances and technologies.
The UTECH Europe 2018 Conference is designed to give attendees a competitive edge through state-of-the-art presentations about rigid foam, flexible foam and CASE markets. It will examine key themes affecting the European and global polyurethane industry in 2018 and beyond.
About UTECH Europe 2018
Programme Sessions Include:
WWW.UTECHEUROPE.EU/CONFERENCE
• Flexible Foams• Rigid/Spray Foams• Additives• Blowing Agents• CASE• Polyureas• Automotive• Environment and
Composites
Keynote Address:
Patrick ThomasChairman and Chief Executive OfficerCovestro
Featured Speakers:
Jon PenriceVP PolyurethanesDow Chemical
Kristof DedeckerInnovation ManagerHuntsman
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Day 1 • 29th May 2018 MORNING: Euro & Florin Room
OPENING SESSION:10:30 Introduction to UTECH Europe 2018
Simon Robinson, Editor, Urethanes Technology International
10:35 WelcomeMike Fowles, President, ISOPA
10:45 Keynote AddressPatrick Thomas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Covestro
11.10 Topic to be confirmedLee Salamone, Senior Director, American Chemistry Council
11:35 Strategic Market OverviewRobert Outram, Associate Director, IAL
12.00 REFRESHMENTS
PLENARY SESSION:12:15 MDI/TDI costs of production
James Elliott, Principle Analyst, Inorganics, IHS Markit
12:40 Pricing TrendsSteve Quinn, Consultant, Polyurethanes & Intermediates, Tecnon OrbiChem
13:05 Keynote: Emotion and function - creating value via marketing the innovationJon Penrice, VP Polyurethanes, Dow Chemical
13:30 TIME TO VISIT EXHIBITION
AFTERNOON: Euro Room
FLEXIBLE FOAMS14:30 PUR 4.0 – Digital developments for an
improved PUR productionUlrich Liman, Senior Vice President for R&D at business unit Polyurethanes, Covestro
14:45 New approach to calculate slabstock foam properties according to formulations and weather conditionsOlivier Lemoine, Expert Technician in Slabstock in the Technical Service Department, Repsol
15:00 Studying of different parameters on resiliency of polyurethane flexible foamsAhmadreza Gharehbaghi, Research and Development Manager, Caspian Polyurethane Technologies
15:15 New solutions for viscoelastic and high resilience flexible foamLutz Brassat, Head Application Development Flexible Foam, Covestro
15:30 REFRESHMENTS
15:45 Effect of selected bio-components on foaming process and selected properties of flexible polyurethane foamsAleksander Prociak, Department of Chemistry and Technology of Polymers, Cracow University of Technology
16:00 Combining fire safety and low emissions - an industry challenge or opportunity?Paul Cookson, Senior R & D Manager,Consumer Comfort, Dow Polyurethanes
16:15 Novel Flame Retardants Developments for the Flexible Foam MarketsZhihao Chen, Application Chemist, ICL-IP America
16.30 Novel, low emission, PU catalyst combinations to help meet stringent Certipur and LGA emission requirementsGeert Dries, Application specialist, Performance Products Division - polymers & resins, PU additives, Huntsman
16:45 Approaches to DBTDL/tin-free catalysis (for foams and elastomers)Kai Klockemann, R&D Director, Performance Chemicals Group
17:00 Polyurethane spray-gel with cooling effect for bedding applicationsAmir Doroodian, Product Development Elastomers, BASF Polyurethanes
17:15 A novel comprehensive range of low VOC HR and polymer polyol for the flexible foam industry - helping the industry to reduce the indoor airborne chemicals levelsPeter Groome, PU Division Technical Director, Jiahua Europe Ltd
17:30 SESSION CLOSE
AFTERNOON: Florin Room
RIGID / SPRAY FOAMS14:30 Step change technology for PIR panel
productionKristof Dedecker, Innovation Manager, Huntsman
14.45 New additive solutions for PIR rigid foamsMartin Glos, Technology Manager Insulation EMEA, Evonik Nutrition & Care
15:00 Advances in new curing additives for high performance rigid foam panels produced by continuous laminationPierre Chaffanjon, Technology Manager, Urethane Additives Europe, Momentive
15:15 Title and speaker to be confirmed
15:30 REFRESHMENTS
15:45 Title and speaker to be confirmed16:00 Beyond λ – what next for insulation
Alberto Mercati, EMEAI Marketing Associate Director, Dow Polyurethanes
16:15 Novel cardanol-based polyols and their use in rigid polyurethane foamsPietro Campaner, Innovation Manager, Cardolite Specialty Chemicals Europe
16:30 Low monomer prepolymerReinhard Albers, Head Application Development Rigid Foam Discontinuous, Covestro
16.45 High functionality polyols obtained from cellulose production waste productsUgis Cabulis, Director and Head of Polymer Laboratory, Latvian State Institute of Wood Chemistry
17:00 Slentite - the high-performance insulation material for renovation and new-build – first case studiesMarc Fricke, Project Manager High Performance Insulation Materials, BASF Polyurethanes
17:15 Title and speaker to be confirmed17:30 SESSION CLOSE
Day 2 • 30th May 2018 MORNING: Euro Room
ENVIRONMENT10:30 Innovation for sustainable growth
Hermann-Josef Doerholt, Senior Vice President Commercial Operations Europe, Middle East, Africa, Polyurethanes Business Unit, Covestro
11.00 Addressing the challenges and opportunities of the circular economy Marcel Moeller, Marketing Director EMEAI, Dow Polyurethanes
11:30 Recycling foam from post‐consumer waste: challenges and opportunities for sustainable developmentRonny Hanich, Research Associate, Fraunhofer ICT / Ana Crespo Soler Senior research Composites, AIMPLAS
11:45 Aminoglycolysis of waste poly(ethylene terephthalate) with diethanolamine and evaluation of the products as rigid polyisocyanurate foams.Ilhan Kurt, Technical Development Specialist/Polyurethane-Construction, Chemical Technologies Department, Istanbul University
12:00 REFRESHMENTS
12:15 The BASF Biomass Balance Approach – a groundbreaking way of deriving products from renewable raw materialsChristian Krueger, Corporate Sustainability Expert, BASF SEVolker Schmidt, Senior Specialist Business Intelligence Construction, BASF Polyurethanes
12:30 Econic catalyst systems for tunable, low-pressure incorporation of CO₂ into polyolsRichard French, Business Development Director, Econic Technologies
12:45 The end-of life of flexible and rigid polyurethane foam: EU regulatory update and way forward for the industry?Michel Baumgartner, Secretary General, EUROPUR, European Association of Flexible PU Foam Blocks ManufacturersArnaud Duvielguerbigny, Managing Director, PU Europe, European Association of PUR/PIR Insulation Products Manufacturers
13:00 Recycling of end-of-life PU mattresses into polyol for rigid PU foam applicationsLyudmila Skokova, Sales Manager, H & S Anlagentechnik
13:15 A transition from synthetic to biodegradable polyurethanesZsanett Boros, Development Engineer, Institute of Chemistry, Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Miskolc
13:30 TIME TO VISIT EXHIBITION
MORNING: Florin Room
ISOPA SESSION:10:30- ISOPA presentations – details to be 12:00 announced
Joerg Palmersheim, ISOPA
12:00 REFRESHMENTS
12:15- ISOPA presentations – details to be 13:15 announced
Speakers to be announced
13:15 Round up discussion Joerg Palmersheim, ISOPA and all presenters
13:30 TIME TO VISIT EXHIBITION
AFTERNOON: Euro Room
ENVIRONMENT CONTINUED 14:30 Environmental innovative water-based
release agents for PU flexible foamsClaire Gauthier, R&D department, Orrion Chemical Orgaform
14:45 Recycling of rigid polyurethane and polyisocyanurate foam wasteGrazyna Mitchener, Director and Principal Consultant, Polychemtech
WWW.UTECHEUROPE.EU/CONFERENCE
UTECH EUROPE 2018 PROGRAMME
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15:00 Krasol F 3000 novel bio-based diol for polyurethanesVirginie CHABROL, Technical Manager Specialities, Total Cray Valley
15:15 Biosuccinium - enabling high-performance bio-based polyurethanesLawrence Theunissen, Global Director Application Development, Reverdia
15:30 REFRESHMENTS15.45 Broadening the raw material base of
polyurethanes: new developments with CO2 & pFAChristoph Gürtler, Head of Catalysis & Technology Incubation, CovestroJochen Norwig, Senior Projectlead CO2 Projects Catalysis & Technology Incubation, CovestroAnnika Stute, Projectlead C1 Buildingblocks Catalysis & Technology Incubation, Covestro
16.00 Open cell polyurethane foams modified with bio-polyolsMaria Kurańska, Cracow University of Technology
BLOWING AGENTS16.15 Effects of HFO 1233zd/pentane blends
on the performance and properties of a polyisocyanurate foam systemSophie Audureau, Technical Service Representative, Arkema Inc.
16:30 Elastopor H 2070 HE – The new HFO based high efficiency rigid foam for commercial refrigerationDejan Petrovic, Head of Product Development PU Rigid Foams Europe, BASF PolyurethanesHendrik Wagner, Product Development PU Rigid Foams Europe, BASF Polyurethanes
16:45 New generation multi-component EasyFroth and MHs with direct injection for HFOs.Speaker to be confirmed, Cannon
17:00 Opteon foam blowing agents for cold chain applicationsErnest B. Wysong, Global Technology Leader, Opteon Foam Blowing, Chemours Company
17:15 Next generation blowing agents in rigid spray foam- A 3 stream equipment solution to processingMurphy Mahaffey, Director of International Sales, Polyurethane Machinery Corporation (PMC)
17.30 Opteon foam blowing agents for spray foam and construction applicationsJeffrey Sowder, Technical Service Consultant, Opteon Foam, Chemours Company
17:45 SESSION CLOSE
AFTERNOON: Florin Room
CASE SESSION: COATINGS, ADHESIVES, SEALANTS AND ELASTOMERS
14:30 Enabling the sustainable production of PU based artificial leather with new polyurethane additive Michael Klostermann, Regional Technical Manager EMEA – High Density PU, Evonik
14:45 Autonomous self-healing polyurethane elastomersAngela Smits, Technology Development Manager – Adhesives, Plastics & Elastomers, Croda Coatings and Polymers
15:00 Self-healing behaviour in polycaprolactone-based polyurethanesAngel Marcos-Fernandez, Researcher, Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnologia de Polimeros (CSIC)
15:15 Polycarbonate diol-based polyurethane sealants with improved weathering and chemical resistance intended for building and constructionManuel Colera, Atlantic Business Development and Marketing Manager, Fine Chemicals Business Unit, UBE
15:30 REFRESHMENTS
COMPOSITES16:00 New polyurethane systems for the
production of pultruded composite profilesBert Neuhaus, Product Development Pultrusion, BASF Polyurethanes Julia Liese, Research Composites and Adhesives, BASF Polyurethanes
16:15 Raw materials for pultruded composites with extreme UV, chemical and weathering resistanceStamo Mentizi, Covestro
16:45 Composites – the next frontier for PUAlberto Fangareggi, Senior R&D Director, Dow Polyurethanes
17:00 Session and speaker TBC17:15 Session and speaker TBC17:30 SESSION CLOSE
Day 3 • 31st May 2018 MORNING: Euro Room
POLYUREAS SESSION:10:30 The 4 ½ polyurea generations: RIM /
automotive; spray elastomers; cast applications; polyurea foam; recycling Kai Klockemann, Managing Director, Nitroil Polyurea
10:45 Spray and moulded polyurea elastomers for high thermal resistance (in automotive and industrial applications)Stefan Haubenreisser, R&D Manager, INPUT – Institute for Polyurethane Technology
11:00 Study on the effect of water, residual primary amine and humidity on the properties of polyaspartic polyureaEric Liu, Wanhua
11:30 REFRESHMENTS
11:45 Application technology: Spanning the gap from pour applications to very thin coatings in pipes and complex structuresChristian Bremer, Director Sales & Marketing, WIWA Wilhelm Wagner
12:00 From post-consumer mattresses to virgin roof coatings and sealantsE. Kornejew, R&D Manager Recycling,Performance Chemicals
ADDITIVES 12:15 Broadening applicability of organotin
catalystsPeter Frenkel, Vice President of Technology, Galata Chemicals
12:30 Selection of carbon-based additives for thermal management in PU applicationsKlaus Rathberger, Managing Director, Georg H. Luh
12:45 New oligomeric flame retardants for flexible PU foamsHeiko Tebbe, Senior Manager Application Technology Plastic Additives Business, Lanxess Deutschland
13:00 New silicone surfactant with a broad processing latitude for the manufacture of flame retarded foamsMichael Krebs, Technology Manager Comfort EMEA, Evonik Nutrition and CareRuediger Landers, Global Technology Director, Evonik Nutrition and Care
13:15 New stabiliser solutions enabling polyurethanes to fulfill automotive requirementsCinzia Tartarini, CC Automotive & Head of Weathering Center Europe, BASF
13:30 CONFERENCE CLOSE & TIME TO VISIT EXHIBITION
MORNING: Florin Room
AUTOMOTIVE10:30 Vitrox snap cure resins enabling
advanced automotive part design and process engineeringSpeaker tbc, Huntsman
10:45 Novel bio-based technology for toughening adhesives and composites for automotive applicationsPhilippe Michaud, Managing Director, Allrim
11:00 JetPreg, the innovative cannon spray-on-honeycomb solution for lightweight automotive componentsAlessandro Colella, Cannon Afros
11:15 Innovative manufacturing methods using polyurethaneJohan Van Dyck, CEO, Exypnos
11:30 REFRESHMENTS
11:45 Innovative automation solutions for producing parts in polyurethaneJosef Berger, Project Engineering & Sales, Fill
12:00 Speaker to be confirmed12:15 Reactive polymer-bound antioxidants for
polyol and polyurethane foam improving emission profiles and long-term quality of foamSven De Vis, TS & D Engineer, Mililken Europe
12:30 Speaker to be confirmed 12:45 Generation mechanisms of amine and
aldehyde emissions from flexible polyurethane foams and reduction methods by amine catalysts.Hiroshi Fujiwara, Technical Manager, Urethane and Amine Group, Organic Materials Research Laboratory, Tosoh
13:00 Driving the automotive industry forward with new low emission polyurethane additives from EvonikEva Emmrich-Smolczyk, Senior Technical Manager Automotive EMEA, Evonik
13:15 Acoustiflex HFI, a new chapter in acoustic comfort enhancement in automobiles.Speaker to be confirmed, Huntsman
13:30 CONFERENCE CLOSE & TIME TO VISIT EXHIBITION
UTECH EUROPE 2018 PROGRAMME
WWW.UTECHEUROPE.EU/CONFERENCE
please check the website for the latest detailsPROGRAMME MAY BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE
Untitled-1 1 11/30/17 3:19 PMUntitled-1 1 05/12/2017 07:56
Join us at UTECH Europe 2018 to hear from a host of renowned speakers and benefit from the limitless networking opportunities available.
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WWW.UTECHEUROPE.EU/CONFERENCEUntitled-1 1 11/30/17 3:20 PMUntitled-1 1 05/12/2017 07:57
US data special reportUS data special reportwww.utech-polyurethane.com
URETHANES TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018
23
Getting back to where we wereHelen Harker, Associate Director at IAL Consultants told delegates at the CPI conference in New Orleans that US polyurethane production had reached pre-crash levels for the first time. Is the only way up? It depends on product segment…
Across Nafta, demand for pol-yurethane grew by 4.4% be-tween 2014 and 2016, Helen Harker, Associate Director at IAL Consultants told delegates at the CPI meeting, but that number hides wide variations.
Growth in the US was closer to a CAGR of 4.6% during the peri-od of 2014-2016, while, Canada managed 2.7% with Mexico clos-er to the US, Harker explained.
‘Polyurethane production in-creased by 4.4% over 2014 to around 3.8 MT/year (lbs 8.3 bn), the first time that production has surpassed the pre-crash levels of 7.6 bn lbs in 2006. Clearly there are still many growth opportuni-ties available for the PU industry in the future,’ she said.
Across the trading bloc, major application demand continues to be rigid and flexible foam which account for 64% of the market, she said, adding: ‘The main driv-ers continue to be construction and housing. The number of new housing starts increased by 5.6% in 2016 and completions rose by 9.5%.’
Major end-uses for polyu-rethane include: rigid foam for building insulation and flexible foam in the furniture and bed-ding segments, plus elastomers, coatings and adhesives. The fastest growth was in MDI bind-ers for wood. The growth in MDI binders was thanks ‘to the buoy-ant construction market and [be-cause] MDI continued to replace formaldehyde-based resins’ in those applications.
The construction sector ac-counts for ‘37% of the PU market for the materials and PU demand
grew by 6.8% between 2014 and 2016,’ she said.
Harker continued that trans-port, furniture and bedding are the other main groups, she added. ‘Transport accounts for around 19% of the market, with furniture and bedding at around 16%,’ she said.
In the construction sector, growth in rigid foam is driven by building codes which demand improved efficiency and reduced air leakage which helped PIR and spray foam products, she said.
Across Nafta, in the automotive sector, demand for foam, coatings and other PU products used in vehicles grew by 2% between 2014 and 2016. Here, the trend towards lower weight vehicles, with better acoustics, are playing to the material’s strengths.
Oh! Canada Looking at the Canadian market, Harker said it accounts for 8.2% of North American PU production at around 370 kT (lbs 700 m)/year. Not only is it small, she said, but it is growing slowly at 2.7%/year during the study period.
Demand for polyurethane products is dominated by the con-
struction sector, which took 52% of the country’s PU production 2016. PIR board and spray foam experienced the highest growth during the study period, she said, adding, there was increased de-mand for MDI binders.
The Canadian automotive sector was relatively buoyant in 2016. ‘However, like the US, there was a continuing decline in passenger car production. It fell by 9.7% in 2016 over 2015, she said. Again, like the US to some extent this was made up for by commercial vehicle and truck production, which rose about 12% over the same period,’ Harker continued.
Ford and Fiat Chrysler have pledged heavy investment into the Canadian car industry, just as they have in the US, which could be around $1bn each, she said.
In Mexico, we have total PU production increased by 408 kT (lbs 900m) with a CAGR of 4.2% between 2014 and 2016 during the study period. Most of this growth took place in rigid foam for the appliance and construction sectors, Harker added.
Appliances accounted for around 30% of PU demand.
Mexico is the world’s largest ex-porter of fridge freezers and there was strong growth of around 5% in 2016 , in this sector.
Despite this bright spot, growth slowed in 2016 compared with 2015, she said. During the study period, the Mexican economy be-came weaker; inflation increased and the American administration’s attitude to trade with Mexico has increased uncertainty in the country.
About the reportThe End Use Market Survey of the Polyurethanes Industry in the U.S., Canada and Mexico in 2016 was carried out by IAL Consultants on behalf of the ACC Center for the Polyurethanes Industry and is available at www.american-chemistry.com/polyurethanes. It is a comprehensive study based on about 250 interviews with a range of different groups in the value chain including the raw materials producers, polyols and isocyanate producers; systems houses; and end users, who provided a real grass-roots expe-rience of consumer trends. Full copies of the report are sold with customisable data tables.
Nafta: PU production by end use markets 2010-16 (M lbs)
Source: CPI/IAL
0
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
3,000
3,500
Contruction Transport Furniture Bedding Appliance Industrial Other
■ 2010■ 2012■ 2014■ 2016
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prices24 prices www.utech-polyurethane.com
december 2017/january 2018 urethanes technology international
Which direction will isocyanates
take in 2018?
Report by Joyce Grigorey, Consultant, polyurethanes, Tecnon Orbichem
volumes are still relatively small and this does not appear to have had much impact on prices so far this year. Production will be mainly targeted at the domestic and Chinese markets, which would ultimately free up more supply in Europe once significant volumes start being shipped regularly. However, given the current pace of demand growth, the 400 ktpa capacity will not be enough to sustain growth over the longer-term. Additional ca-pacity is still required.
There are a couple of debottleneck pro-jects planned in Europe in the short-term. As well, Covestro’s conversion of a TDI plant to MDI will double capacity at the site once it is up and running at the end of 2018. In the meantime, Wanhua has been establishing itself as a global MDI supplier, with links to both Europe and the US. If plans to build an MDI unit in Louisiana come to fruition, it is not likely to start up for at least another five years. Therefore, the market is expected to remain globally tight for the next several years.
In the TDI market, the tightness has been ongoing since late last year following the idling of BASF’s new plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The plant was taken offline from November and restarted in May after a tem-porary reactor was installed. Since then, the unit was said to have been running well, and supplies in Europe have gradually improved.
However, in October BASF notified cus-tomers that TDI from this plant that was produced during the month of September contained higher levels of dichlorobenzene, which led to health and supply concerns, and ultimately price increases for some buyers. The unprocessed TDI, as well as processed foams, were recalled, despite later reports that the dichlorobenzene levels were not haz-ardous. (See page 14).
Because of this latest issue, European TDI supply is said to have tightened up again. In addition, environmental inspections in China were strict due to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China during October. Plants were shut down for the week-long event, which led to supply tightening and prices rising steeply in Asia. Prices in Asia and the Middle East have continued fluctuating throughout the year on supply limitations, while the US remains tight, even more so since the hurricane disrupted domestic production.
BASF to replace capacityIn 2018, BASF will install the replacement reactor at Ludwigshafen, which will match the capacity of the original reactor and so should, in theory, restore market balance. However, the plant will first need to be taken offline, with some reporting that the outage will last for at least one month. There are reports that the new reactor will be installed around mid-year. Facing supply shortages, buyers will want to stock up on material ahead of time, which should provide support for prices ahead of the shutdown.
Whilst TDI is growing at a slower pace than MDI, there is not much in the way of planned TDI capacity expansions after Sadara, which was recently commissioned in September of this year. The unit continues to ramp up pro-duction but no major impact on global supply or prices is expected this year.
As 2017 drew to a close, many market players were hopeful that 2018 will be better in terms of availability, but as the isocyanates markets remain largely imbalanced, the mood is one of caution. Prices have yet to start their descent, and there are few cues in this final quarter of 2017 that decreases are likely, at least not during the first quarter of 2018.
2017 has been a challenging year for the isocyanates markets. A number of production issues throughout the year have kept supply tight and pushed prices up to new highs. Whilst most market participants would agree that the circumstances that have impacted the industry have been truly unusual, many are left wondering what is in store for 2018 and beyond.
In the MDI market, global supply has been tight since around the start of the second quarter after a number of both planned and unplanned outages significantly limited pro-duction, particularly in China and Europe. A se-ries of delayed restarts from turnarounds and force majeure declarations kept the market tight well into the third quarter. Then, just as it seemed that the market was starting to recov-er, Hurricane Harvey tore through the US Gulf Coast at the end of August. Whilst the damage to isocyanate production units was minimal, the disruption to logistics and transportation continued to linger for months afterwards.
As we headed into December, producers in the US and Europe are heard to be running normally and inventories are gradually being built up. The tension in the market appears to have eased somewhat, but inventories are still uncomfortably low. In the Asian market, a couple of producers are progressing with their turnarounds that were delayed from October. As well, BASF is planning on install-ing a new methane steam reformer at its site in Chongqing, China in order to improve the reliability of the unit. According to a company source, the new 400 ktpa unit is still not run-ning at full rates.
Sadara on stream MDI from Sadara’s new unit in Saudi Arabia has already started trickling into the Chinese, European and Middle Eastern markets, but
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SOUTH KOREA
Korea: setting the sceneSince Urethanes Technology last visited Korea in 2015, the industry has continued to grow in the areas where it touches the automotive industry, but signs of maturity are beginning to show in other sectors.
The Korean polyurethane industry is well back-integrated into poyols, MDI and TDI, ac-cording to figures supplied by Polyurethane World (PW), the local language polyurethane publication.
It is a country dominated by rigid appli-cations for polyurethane foam, the numbers show, and that remains largely unchanged up to 2015. In 2005, demand for rigid material at around 168 kT/year was 68 kT/year larger than demand for flexible materials at 100 kT/year. By 2015, rigid demand was running at 196 kT/year, and flexible at approxi-mately129 kT/year.
This is driven by the structure of the consuming industries for both flexible and rigid foams.
The flexible sector is unusual because, unlike other industries in the West where slabstock is the largest volume use, the au-tomotive sector is consistently the largest end-use sector for the materials, with more 70% of flexible foam consumption, according to figures from PW.
That local language publication puts the automotive industry’s share of flexible foam consumption at between 70% and 75.6% of consumption between 2005 and 2015. In ab-solute terms, PW suggests that consumption in the automotive sector reached a peak at 97.8 kT in 2015. There was a small fall to 93
kT in 2016, it said.The export-driven Korean automo-
tive sector grew by 39.3% between 2005 and 2015, the figures show. This was about eight times faster than the furniture/bedding sector, which experienced growth in con-
sumption from 17.5 kT in 2005 to 18.5 kT in 2015. The automotive sector’s
consumption of PU grew at twice the rate of the next fastest growing segment, garment/footwear. This increased from 3 kT in 2005 to 3.6kT in 2015, the numbers show.
Rigid foam keeps on growingConsumption by the rigid foam increased from 168 kT in 2005 to 196 kT in 2015. However, there are two growth drivers for
rigid foam: export-driven refrigeration and domestic construction.
Taking refrigeration first, demand grew from 74.8 kT/year in 2005 to 86 kT/year in 2015, an increase of about 15% or 11 kT/year. This was supplemented by the construction sector, where annual demand increased by 13 kT/year from 82 kT to 96 kt/year between 2005 and 2015, according to the figures from PW.
These two sectors have been the most re-silient between 2015-2016, each adding 500 tonne/year demand.
Korea is showing increasing signs of ma-turity as a manufacturing sector, at least in terms of polyurethane consumption. Demand growth between 2005 and 2010 was 15.6% as the total volume of rigid and flexible poly-urethane grew from 267.5 kT/year to 309.3 kT/year in the period.
PW figures show that growth slowed to around 5% between 2010 and 2015, adding a further 16 kT/year during that time.
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The capacity of PU raw materials in Korea (unit: M/T)
Source: Polyurethane World
Maker Tech Capacity overseas (China)PO SKC ARCO 210,000 Degussa 100,000 Total 310,000 Polyol MCNS ARCO 180,000 KPX Chemical SANYO 210,000 70,000 KUMHO Chemical DOW 135,000 130,000 BASF KOREA BASF 90,000 KUKDO Chemical Daichi – 110,000 Total 615,000 310,000TDI HANWHA Chemical Rhone poulance 150,000 OCI Allied Signal 50,000 BASF KOREA BASF 160,000 Total 360,000 MDI KUMHO Chemical Mitsui 240,000 BASF KOREA BASF 250,000 DOW KOREA DOW 25,000 stop Total 515,000 Polyester Seho tech own 20,000 Polyol Aikyung Chemical own 20,000 Songwon own 10,000 others 50,000 Total 100,000
➡ Continued from page 25
Integrating backwardsThe sole producer of propylene oxide in the country, according to PW, is SKC, with 310 kT/year capacity. KPX Chemical has the largest polyether polyol capacity, with around 210 kT/year, followed by MCNS with 180 kT/year, Kumho Chemical with 135 kT/year and Kukdo, which has 110kT/year overseas capac-ity. Both KPX with 70 kT/year and Kumho with 130 kT/year have overseas/Chinese polyol capacity. If both domestic and overseas pro-duction is included, then Korean companies have 835 kT/year polyether polyol capacity.
There is one other company producing poly-ols in the country: BASF with 90 kT capacity.
The polyether polyol segment is the only area where Korean businesses have chemi-cals production outside the country, according to PW.
Total polyester polyol capacity in Korea is 100 kT, split between Seho Tech and Aikyung Chemicals, with 20kT/year each, and Songwon, with 10 kT/year capacity. All of these companies use home-grown, Korean produc-tion technology. There are a number of other producers in the country, and PW estimates that they manufacture a further 50kT/year.
Turning to TDI, BASF, with 160 kT/year, and Hanwah, with 150 kT/year, are the largest producers. They are significantly bigger than
OCi, which has 50 kT/year capacity. MDI capacity in Korea totals 515 kT/year,
with BASF the largest producer with capacity
for 250kT/year, 10 kT/year more than its rival Kumho. Dow has a very small 25 kT/year plant in the country, according to PW.
DUT: making its own way aheadFollowing PU China and the KPUS meetings in Guangzhou and Jeju Island, Korea in August and September, Urethanes Technology visited a number of companies across the Korean peninsula.
Located in the city of Busan in the south-east of Korea, DUT Korea was founded in 1992 by Yong Chai Jung, an ex-military mechanical engineer. The company works closely with a number of local universities in the bustling town.
In addition to making and developing mix heads for polyurethane foam, the compa-ny has recently diversified into the bedding sector. This gives it a second revenue stream and helps capture value downstream from the foamer. ‘The most comfortable bed is the one I want to make,’ Jung said.
The light engineering business has devised a continuous foaming process that enables
foam with six or seven different densities across a block to be produced. Typically, the foam will be denser where the greater pres-sure is put on the mattress, at the shoulders and hips.
He said that the idea is that the foam can then be cut from cured blocks in the same way as conventional mattresses, but without assembly and gluing as this can increase costs and lead to quality issues.
Near the seaDUT employs about 60 people in Busan, South Korea. The company owns the freehold of two purpose-built factories which occupy 5610 m2. The workflow is designed so that parts are produced, either from scratch or semi-finished castings, at the first plant and finished at the second.
He said DUT wants to merge the two fac-tories onto one large site as this will reduce its costs. Additionally, the port of Busan in which DUT is located is surrounded by residential areas. The local authority is interested in de-veloping it for residential development.
DUT claims to be one of two companies, the other being Krauss Maffei, which make both the pumps and the mixing heads for its machines. ‘Korean steel is used here,’ Jung said with pride.
Before setting up the company, he worked as an army military technician at a military machinery complex near Busan. While he was employed there he wrote a high school text-book about mechanical engineering. He be-came only the 59th person to be designated a Korean master technician, that was 11 years ago, now there are 125.
Jung likes to do his work in the old-fash-ioned way, using a set square and drafting board I’m ‘only analogue!’ He said. He likes to produce his own drawings when designing the firm’s pumps.
DUT, which stands for Dual Use Technology, started trading in 1992 and got into the poly-urethane business in 1997 when it started to make parts for polyurethane production.
It was an accidental process, Jung says. Initially, the company was built to make bear-ing for military equipment bearings, when a friend at a large Korean company explained that they were trying to devise a machine to make polyurethane parts.
Working for the big boys The large firm had a solution, he said, but the mix heads it had developed needed to be replaced every two or three years and it was expensive to import them, Jung added.
Another large Korean company had tried
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for seven years to build its own mix head, but was unsuccessful, he said. This was when Jung designed his fist successful mix head, which was then adopted by the large firm.
‘I used my experience in working for the army to understand the problem and bring the solutions to build my new machine. This relationship still pays off,’ he said. For exam-ple, when the large Korean tech business builds plants overseas that need polyurethane machinery, his company is often the preferred supplier.
DUT exports between 50 and 70% of out-put each year because of this, he said.
After its start with mix heads, the company started looking at polyurethane machinery, as imports of high pressure machinery were expensive, he said. Korea had the ability to make low pressure machines, but the industry needed high pressure machines. ‘These were hard to build in Korea,’ he said. But DUT can supply them into Korea, he added.
DUT’s business is good, and the firm ex-ports most of its production. ‘It depends on the world position,’ Jung said. ‘About 20-30% share is sold on the world market.’ He added that this can be up to 50-70%, with clients
such as Samsung and LG using the same models of DUT machinery in their over-seas bases as they do in Korea.
‘They want to keep the quality without changing mix heads and pumps,’ he said.
Jung said that the most recent mix head offering, DTRC, which was launched at K 2015, is a patented system. DUT had de-veloped mix heads in the past, but failed to
protect the designs sufficiently well, he said.
Tilt for better mixingThe DTRC model is a dual tilt direct impingement model, which has angled impinge-ment of the isocyanate and polyol in the mix chamber.
The jets point towards the back of the cham-ber. ‘This,’ Jung said, ‘improves mixing, laminar output flow and efficiency.’ Because the mix is better, he claimed, then quality is better and there is less scrap than can occur with other designs where the diisoycanate and polyols directly impinge at 180˚.
Jung claims that there could be between five or 6% raw material savings. ‘Energy use is lower and machine life is better,’ he said.
The idea for the design came from looking at existing 180˚ impingement mix heads. ‘They have the most flow, but if the flows were angled then it is much better,’ Jung said.
Take-up would be better if it were not for the fact that there is established business using existing mix heads which are good and give good service. ‘The market needs to be developed,’ he said.
Also at K2015, the firm launched a nu-cleation system. DUT is not aggressive about supplying the part. There are other producers in the market with similar systems and they have not been successful, he said. Nippon Steel is using the DUT nucleation system for a rigid foam system.
DUT’s business is split about 50-50 be-tween flexible and rigid, with the automotive sector taking up a large part of the flexible business. In the rigid business, DUT ‘supplies machinery all the way from the coil to the cutting on the line and builds conveyors and converters,’ he said.
Looking around the workshopsWe do that because some parts do hard ser-vice. The conveyor is the most important of these. We track parts; each part has a serial number,’ Jung explained.
DUT has supplied lines to Nippon Steel which is making rigid foam insulation at its plant in Nagoya, using a DUT mix head and a 30m long conveyor line. This is hydraulically operated, machines DUT supplies to India, for example, have a manually screwed down haul-off line.
Such a manually-adjusted screw-down haul off line has been supplied by DUT to Sintex in India, Jung said.
The company’s client base includes firms such as Inoac and Toyota, he added.
The firm has two production and assem-bly plants separated by short distance by road from each other. Looking around the assembly lines we saw mould carriers and rotating tables under construction at one site, at the other site we saw how the technically demanding mix heads are constructed. Jung said that around five people assemble each mix head in a production-cell environment.
Jung has also been turning his mind to something different to the standard range of machinery. He is interested in the mattress market. And on a pilot plant makes foam for pillows and mattresses. The mattresses are made in a box foam plant and can feature up to seven layers which change across the bed with different hardness’s from head to foot. These can be supplied on a motorised frame so that the masses can be infinitely adjusted.
such as Samsung and LG using the same models of DUT machinery in their over-seas bases as they do in Korea.
‘They want to keep the quality without changing mix heads and pumps,’ he said.
Jung said that the most recent mix head offering, DTRC, which was launched at K 2015, is a patented system. DUT had de-veloped mix heads in the past, but failed to
protect the designs sufficiently well, he said.
Tilt for better mixingThe DTRC model is a dual tilt direct impingement model, which has angled impinge-ment of the isocyanate and
The most comfortable bed is the one I want to makeYong Chai Jung,DUT
Kangam Chemicals running the raceKangam Chemical is a raw materials company based around 50 km north of Seoul, Korea, and claims a number of significant milestones, including making the binders for a number of Olympic athletic tracks. Simon Robinson made a visit.Korean industrial parks are big and well laid out, with good facilities. It was raining when we visited Kangam Chemical’s site in Ansan, north of Seoul; the high humidity did little to dampen the enthusiasm of the people at the firm who showed us around.
Founded in 1971 as a company making phe-nolic resins, its most high-profile contracts were to supply polyurethane binders for the 1988 and 2012 Olympic athletic tracks. If you fly into the country through Inchon airport, the chances are that you or your plane will travel over polyu-rea spray that was produced using its materials.
The company has about seven different product lines, including brake pads -- an outlet for phenolic resins -- through to polyurethane grades such as elastomeric parts and synthet-ic leathers. It exports to about 20 countries worldwide, said Yong Kwon Lee, manager of the overseas sales team.
The company is medium-sized and in 2016 had sales of about $140m. ‘We esti-mate that they will be greater than $200m this year,’ Lee claimed. He said that domestic sales were up around 80% in 2016. ‘It’s going better than last year,’ he added.
Well-spread assets With a headquarters in Seoul, the firm has four sales offices around the country and an-other production in Pyungtaek, 74 km south of the capital.
Kangam also has a presence in China, and recently moved its Chinese sales office to Shanghai because most customers are based there. ‘It is better to be close to customers,’ said Lee.
Sales of almost all types of products are
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growing, he added. This is driven by high MDI and TDI prices but also volumes are up by 7%, Lee explained.
The company moved into polyurethane production in 1984. ‘The idea was to intro-duce the materials into the Korean market be-cause the quality of the resin was rising,’ Lee continued. He added that the main markets for the business at that time were shoe soles and cast resins.
By 1988, Kangam was making resins for footwear OEMs like Nike and Adidas and the firm was helping them to produce better qual-ity footwear resins. Typically, Kangam supplies PU raw materials to OEMs via system houses. The company also supplies its own polyure-thane systems for construction applications, Lee added.
Environmental CoatingsThe company has now branched out into water-borne polyurethane resins, breathable cast PU systems for clothing, polyurea and adhesives used in food packaging.
Overall, the business has about 500 T/year sales in synthetic leather, 2 kT/year shoe
sole materials, around 1.6 kT/year in casting resins, 6 kT/year polyurethane adhesives and around 41kT/year polyethers for slabstock and rigid applications. Around 25 kT/year production is carried out in Pyungtaek. Polyols are produced using DEG as the starting point and the firm is supplied by many different companies, said Lee.
Kangam, which is Korean for swallow, employs 20 people in new product develop-ment and 40 in sales, out of a total staff of 250 people, Lee said.
Like other companies visited in this trip, Kangam uses expertise from across Korean so-
ciety. ‘We develop some of our materials with the government and universities,’ said Lee.
The company’s interest in polyurethane elastomers naturally lead into a discussion about curing agent, MbOCA.
Kwang-Soon Hwang, director of the Kangam R&D centre said that, in the light of
a Korean government ruling in 2015 and tight restrictions on MbOCA residue
in Japan, Kangam developed non-MbOCA systems for polyu-rethane elastomers. These are based on DMTDA and amines and 1,4-butadiene. There are
other systems, but Hwang said these are much harder to process.
Additionally, Kwang added, Kangam has been working to reduce the downsides of DMTDA cure packages. He said that these are characterised by polyurethane elastomers with poor humidity resistance. Newer systems that Kangam has developed still see lower properties, but to a much lesser extent. ‘There is still a 10-15% fall in properties, compared with MbOCA grades,’ Hwang said. He added that the company is working on developing a system that is useful all year round because in Korea the weather can be very extreme.
➡ Continued from page 27 ciety. ‘We develop some of our materials with the government and universities,’ said Lee.
The company’s interest in polyurethane elastomers naturally lead into a discussion about curing agent, MbOCA.
Kwang-Soon Hwang, director of the Kangam R&D centre said that, in the light of
a Korean government ruling in 2015 and tight restrictions on MbOCA residue
in Japan, Kangam developed non-MbOCA systems for polyu-rethane elastomers. These are based on DMTDA and amines
It is better to be close to customersYong Kwon Lee, Kangam Chemical
Being flexible with foamJust north of Ansan lies Sihung, home of Kumho Chemical Industry, a flexible foam producer, and what the company claims is one of the oldest Hennecke flexible foam lines in existence.Like a much-loved sweeping brush that has had its head replaced twice and its handle three times, there is a Hennecke foam line resting quietly at the back of a production shed at Kumho Chemical. The line was bought in 1960 following a fire, and was the first of three lines from two different suppliers, explained Do Young Kim, one of two compa-ny presidents.
It is moot how much apart from the chassis is original, but it sits there unbowed by time and, nowadays, unbothered by the demands of production.
Kumho bought a newer Hennecke ma-chine in 2009 and is full of praise for it. The company uses the Hennecke machine to sup-plement output from an older, 1995, Cannon Viking model.
Of the two lines currently employed for production, the Hennecke is used most. ‘Five years ago, we were still using the old Hennecke machine,’ Kim explained. ‘The new machine is good and has good control to make a good foam. Customers are demanding that.’
The Cannon Viking is old and the control is not quite as good as the new machine, he added, but it is still used regularly.
Business is harder today, as it is for many foamers, Kim explained. ‘Raw material prices are rising, but we can’t pass this on to the cus-
tomers. They want lower prices at all times.’ To reduce the effect of higher isocyanate prices, customers want lower density, he added.
Resilient businessThe company has doubtless weathered such storms in the many years since its foundation in 1957, when the Dong Sing company in-troduced flexible foam into Korea for the first time. This business was later purchased by Kumho Tyre, and subsequently was spun out, in May 1993, to the firm’s other President, JD Lee in a management buyout as it was a very small part of a relatively large tyre company.
Kumho Tire is currently the 14th largest tyre company in the world, with sales of $2.4bn in 2016, according to the World Tire Report from Tire Business.
Kumho Chemical, the foamer, employs
80 people at its 33,000 m2 site. About 55% of the company’s 6 kT/year output goes into flexible foam products, including beds (30%), seats and sofas (25%), and 15% is used in automotive, with the remaining 30% split evenly between electronic, clothing and con-struction applications, said Lee.
The foam commands a premium in the market, he claimed. ‘Korean foam is better than others,’ he said. ‘We can sell it at a higher price. Why is it so good? Because of contin-uous quality monitoring and by developing other foams such as viscoelastic. The Korean government, universities and industry work to-gether to produce better products.’ Kim added that his company has benefitted from this.
Kumho supplies foam to several car mak-ers, Lee said. The company self-formulates and, of the 80 staff, 20 are managerial or technical, with 60 in the production areas.
The company operates a 50m line and ware-housing for blocks on the site. Kumho also slits foam for lamination. It has a loop-splitter from Fecken-Kirfel, and another from Albrecht Baumer.
For demanding automotive applications, Kumho has developed a process that removes the smell from foam by passing it through a heat-ed tunnel. This drives off the volatile components, said Kim. He added that about 4,000 m of foam can be treated this way in about 8 hours.
Do Young Kim J D Lee
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Sehotech looks towards the complete package
Iksan is, among other things, a major rail junction in South Korea, and marks one of the places where, more than 500 years ago, the country stopped being a predominantly Buddhist nation and moved to Confucianism. It is also, in polyurethane terms, a site of catalyst development. Simon Robinson visited Sehotech to find out more.
Sehotech is developing a new range of bismuth catalysts for the polyurethane in-dustry and is in the process of getting them approved, said Min-Gyu Kim, director at the company.
The business, which started operation in Ulsan in Korea’s south-east corner, opened a facility in in Iksan, in the west of the country, because it wanted to expand with new prod-ucts, Kim explained.
‘It was difficult to do this on the existing cramped site in Ulsan,’ Kim explained. The Iksan site now handles higher volume polyes-ter polyol production.
There are 30 people employed in Iksan on a 15,000 m2 site, and a further 15 work on the 12,000 m2 site in Ulsan.
Sehotech chose Iksan as the location for the new plant because it has good transport links, is a Korean rail hub, and is still largely rural with rice a widespread crop. The area is unusual in Korea because it is very flat.
The company converts diethylene glycol into polyester polyols at Iksan. It uses 10 suppliers, and distils all the materials into 16 fractions which are then processed further in eight batch reactors with capacities ranging between 3 and 15 tonnes.
While Iksan is the firm’s high-volume pro-duction business, the polyurethane catalyst business is still based in Ulsan.
Move for roomInitially, the company’s product slate included both tin and bismuth catalysts, but it moved out of tin once these chemicals became more tightly regulated. Now concentrating firmly on bismuth, it has developed several catalysts for PU, but it is taking a little while to get these approved, Kim said.
However, if all goes to plan, a number of new products should be launched at the start of 2018. This launch is likely to see polyols for the rigid insulation market for boards, pipes and spray foam. These products are being developed by an eight-person team in Iksan, all of whom are Korean nationals. The company invests about 20% of its sales in research and development, Kim said. He added that his company bolsters its research efforts with help from Chonbuk National University.
Additionally, Sehotech is involved in poly-urethane recycling, and has had a process for this for a number of years, said Lee.
‘The polyols could be used in flexible foam, but this is difficult as the Sehotech process is for rigid products,’ Kim said. It is hard to use recycled polyols from flexible foam because of the complexity of the formulations.
‘The formulation for flexible foam has more components,’ he said. ‘These can be-come impurities in polyols. Sehotech finds that parts made with the polyols can be used more easily in construction applications.’
The company developed this technology 17 years ago, and started selling it in 2000. ‘We have been developing it as the time has passed,’ Kim added.
Recycled polyols as raw materials for rigid applications would be environmentally sound products, he added. Compared to using virgin polyols, Kim said that these materials can save customers money, give good quality products and improve the environment.
Closing the circleSehotech processes 100 tonne/year rigid foam from scrapped domestic refrigerators in Korea. This is done in conjunction with other recycling partners who are commercially in-terested in the metal components. ‘To save transportation costs, Sehotech takes the foam as compacted pellets,’ said Kim.
The finished polyol can give polyurethanes with the same properties as foam made with virgin polyol, Kim said. After the recycling pro-cess is complete, the 100 tonne/year scrap becomes 200 tonne/year polyol, he added,
and recycled polyol made this way sells for the same price as virgin polyol.
The company’s rigid polyester polyols business exports to more
than 40 countries. Technology developments in the process have continued over the past 17 years,
and have led to a process time for the conversion that can be around
30% shorter than other methods. This makes it cheaper to produce polyester poly-
ols by this method than using alternative approaches, Kim add-
ed. The company has chosen not to patent the process, because it would give the com-petition an idea of how to do the same.
Recycled polyols are only one component of the firm’s polyols offering. Kim said that Sehotech turns over about $20m/year and sells roughly 800 tonne/year product. The company is also looking to get into the polyu-rethanes systems business, Kim said. He sug-gested that this could concentrate on product areas such as building insulation, including panel, board and spray foam, he said. ‘We make many products and want to become a systems house.’
‘We started 10 years ago, but it was in very small quantities. Three years ago, we started selling product into the panel, board and spray markets, and have a number of customers,’ said Kim. He expects the business to grow strongly in the next few years. ‘They make up less than 10% of sales, but could be 30% in a few years. Flame retardant products will grow very fast,’ he added.
‘The big refrigerator makers could use our foam. It is good enough, I believe, but engineers are very hard to change,’ Kim concluded.
and recycled polyol made this way sells for the same price as virgin polyol.
The company’s rigid polyester polyols business exports to more
than 40 countries. Technology developments in the process have continued over the past 17 years,
and have led to a process time for the conversion that can be around
30% shorter than other methods. This makes it cheaper to produce polyester poly-
ols by this method than using alternative
To save transportation costs, Sehotech takes the foam as compacted pelletsMin-Gyu Kim, Sehotech
Urethanes Technology International toured through Korea in the first week of September 2017. We would like to thank Min Pyo and Choong-Ha Lee for their kindness and sup-port in facilitating the visit, the companies which made their staff available for interview, and all those who shared their knowledge and enthusiasm.
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december 2017/january 2018 urethanes technology international
Improving interior air quality is the name of the game
The first UTECH Automotive Congress was held in Amsterdam in mid-October 2017. The first day’s proceedings concentrated on the size of the prize, and featured a range of presentations about polyurethane additives that were designed to reduce emissions inside the vehicle. Simon Robinson chaired the meetingThe interior air quality of passenger cars is one of the hottest topics in the polyurethane industry right now, and many companies are devoting considerable time and resources to find ways of removing the new car smell.
It is a complex battle that is being waged on several fronts by OEMs, standards bodies and raw materials suppliers.
OEMs understand the issues that affect their customers not only in terms of the smell of new cars, but also the potential health risks attached to that smell and different consumer preferences around the world.
Standards bodies are working to produce a coherent set of global standards that will ac-count for what is possible, what is desirable, and what is achievable.
Raw material suppliers, from large polyol producers through to integrated and speciality businesses, are working hard to produce formu-lations and additives that will help Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers produce products that fit with the standards, and the demands of both OEMs and demands for lower volatile materials in the future.
Many of these topics were addressed on the first day of the Congress, but the meeting opened with a presentation from Justin Cox of LMC Automotive, who set the scene by giving data on the size of the automotive industry in a number of key regions.
The size of the prizeCox opened by warning, ‘2016 was the eighth year of global light vehicle sales growth, but, we can’t get too light-hearted. This is a recov-ery from a very deep recession, and we are looking at about 2% growth in light vehicle demand, which is relatively modest.’
In a business as complex as automotive and on a stage as big as the world, perfor-mance is a patchwork of highlights and slow growth. ‘In Latin and South America, light ve-hicle sales could grow by 11% this year,’ Cox said. Growth here is because South America and its dominant economy, Brazil, is coming out of a very nasty recession. ‘The first two quarters of this year have shown very small signs of economic growth and this has started to feed through into sales,’ he said.
Central and Eastern Europe are also bright spots, Cox believes, and this region is domi-nated by the Russian market. ‘This, like South America, was ravaged by economic difficul-ties and turmoil. This is starting to bottom out, and we are seeing positive growth. We expect sales to increase by 6% on average,’ he predicted.
He believes there is more good news in Asia-Pacific, excluding China, with 5% growth this year. ‘This is underpinned by a robust Indian market,’ he said. ‘Despite tax changes, the economic activity in the region has been enough to propel forward a rise of almost 10% this year. In Japan has not seen growth as fast as India but economic performance has supported activity in that part of the world.’
Turning to the key markets of China and North America, Cox said that in North America things are starting to cool down. ‘We expect to see a decline of 2% this year,’ he said. ‘In China, there is a big growth transformation from 13% last year to around 1% this year.’
China is a region that has exhibited phenom-enal growth, he claimed. ‘In 1999, the Chinese market was not much bigger than the Italian market today, and in 20 years it has grown to 30m units, which represents a third of the global total of light vehicle sales,’ Cox said.
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urethanes technology international december 2017/january 2018
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Cox said that, from the end of 2015 going into 2016, there were signs of a wobble, and the economy was starting to slow. However, the Chinese authorities gave incentives that supported the market.
‘This played through from 2016 to 2017 to such a degree that there has been a pay-back from the start of 2017, which is likely to extend into 2018.’ The authorities are not likely to introduce more incentives into China unless the market stalls again.
The US market is much more mature and stable, with production now around 17m to 17.5m units. ‘Going forward, we expect growth to remain,’ he said.
‘Europe has not had the V-shaped re-covery that was seen in the US, but there have been bumper years. Growth in 2015 was 9%, and 2016 had 6% growth. That momentum had pushed through into the first part of 2017. But it’s beginning to fall off slightly, to around 3%.’
The European light vehicle market is a mixed bag,’ Cox said. ‘Italy is growing at 9% this year, and Spain 2%, both markets which are playing catch-up from the recession. More mature markets such Germany and France, which are growing a little faster than expected, but not as dramatically Italy and Spain.’
Economic troubles in Turkey and cyclical slowdown and the Brexit effect in the UK are adding drag to the market, he said.
Cox said that demand in the Russian mar-ket has been a rollercoaster ride. ‘Two to three years ago, it was producing 2m or 3m units/year,’ he said. ‘This had fallen by more than one-third in 2015, and has bumped along the bottom since then.’ There are signs of an up-turn, he added. ‘We expect to see 10% growth in Russia, but from a very low base.’
This is a result of a Russian devaluation, which has helped local companies, including Lada, as imports have fallen.
Move towards the Exit‘Brexit is an issue in the UK market, the deval-uation itself is squeezing incomes and causing prices to rise,’ Cox said. This has had a marked effect on automotive demand.
‘The UK imports 90% of its cars, and 80% of those are built in Europe,’ he explained. ‘Brexit has a big impact. Our base case, with no shock no cliff edge, has production down by about a million units/year. If a harder Brexit is pursued, that could be down by more than 2m units/year.’
Reducing EmissionsThe next section of the meeting featured a collection of papers looking at the latest devel-opments in additives designed to help reduce the level of emissions in automotive interiors.
Anti-scorch or anti-oxidant packages play an important role in protecting polyurethane
foam from the effects of heat that is gener-ated during the exothermic polymerisation reaction. They are designed to protect against a number of free radicals, those unstable and highly reactive chemical species that are generated by heat or chemical reactions. This can damage foams, and lead to the emission of other low molecular weight products that are formed during the polyurethane polymer-isation process. The protection can also help retain the colour of polyethylene foams.
Cinzia Tartarini, Application Specialist in BASF’s global competence centre for automo-tive, focused on the company’s Irgastab PUR 70 anti-scorch package for polyols and PU foams, which is used in automotive interiors.
Flexible polyethylene foams represent a large proportion of automotive interiors, and contribute to emissions. ‘With a state-of-the-art polyurethane anti-scorch system used in polyol and polyurethane foams, the emissions are quite high,’ she said.
Tartarini said that while an anti-scorch system may produce under 25 ppm of VOC emissions, which she described as ‘quite low’, levels of FOG may be much higher. FOG emissions are those produced by substances containing a range of carbon chain lengths from C14 or C16 to C32, depending on the definition in the test standard.
➡ Continued on page 32
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DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 URETHANES TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL
In her presentation, she showed how by changing from BASF’s earlier anti-scorch prod-uct Irgastab PUR 68 which, according to VDA 278 2011, produced foams which emitted approximately 650 ppm FOG to the firm’s new Irgastab PUR 70 product, this could fall to ap-proximately 10 ppm or lower. Foams emitting more than 100 ppm VOC and 250 ppm FOG will fail the VDA 278 test.
She added that the Irgastab PUR70 grade increases resistance to discoloration to a greater degree than the previous PUR 68 grade. It also improves the heat resistance of polyols before they start to oxidise.
Fading awayGas fading – discoloration as a result of the interaction between polyurethane foam and nitrous oxides (NOx) – can also be considerably reduced using anti-scorch packages, she added. Again, the Irgastab PUR 70 grade gives signifi-cantly better performance than Irgastab PUR 68.
In moulded foams, the heat build-up is generally less than within slabstock because smaller moulded parts have a higher sur-face area-to-volume ratio than larger blocks. Because the heat stress is much lower in moulded foams, a single antioxidant can often be added at 0.2% to give acceptable results, she said. The PUR 70 grade will give equivalent results at 0.1% addition levels, she added. Similarly, adding at half the level of an antioxidant the new PUR 70 grade gives greater thermal stability in polyols.
BASF developed the new scorch system in response to increasingly tough automotive standards, she said. The new additive will improve the durability and quality of foams used for seating, and will also help companies comply with emission requirements and en-hance the air quality drivers and passengers experience inside the cockpit.
Sven de Vis, Technical Service and Development Engineer at Milliken, outlined
the use of the company’s Milliguard AOX-1 reactive antioxidant.
Like several other of their product offer-ings, it contains an active moiety, in this case an antioxidant, grafted onto a polymeric tail. This increases the compatibility with the host polymer, De Vis said. ‘For the polyurethane in-dustry, the hydroxyl group at the of the end of the polymeric tail will react with isocyanates, and Milliken’s additive becomes incorporated into the PU matrix. There is no migration, and no contribution to emissions.’
Milliken developed its antioxidants after studying the effects on aged polyether polyol, and examining the radical families that were generated. This showed that almost 20% of the radicals were carbon-centred. ‘This encouraged us to think that lactone-based antioxidants would be useful,’ he said.
Microwave scorch tests were used to evaluate the anti-scorch performance with dif-ferent levels of antioxidant, followed by larger scale tests where Milliken evaluated the anti-oxidant performance on 1m3 foam blocks to
reflect real-life conditions. The temperature in the centre the block was measured by probes. After foaming, the samples, were stored out-side for safety reasons, de Vis added.
He continued that the box foam trials helped determine the optimal AO level in the polyol. This was confirmed by trials at industri-al customer sites.
StabilityMilliguard technology also has a positive effect in the stability of PU foam to UV light and to gas fading. This was proved via trials in which foams are exposed to NOx fumes, and the discoloration evaluated after different periods of exposure time.
He explained that, compared with stand-ard antioxidants, Milliguard AOX-1 technology has a minimum contribution to VOC and FOG based on trials performed under the VDA278 protocol in a flame-retarded lab foam at 40kg/m³ density. Looking at FOG values, conventional antioxidants fail the 250ppm limit. The Milliguard product gives almost no contribution, he said.
De Vis also outlined a new aldehyde scavenging technology which, he said, could reduce levels of formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and acrolein found in automotive seat foams.
According to results carried out in a 1m³ environmental test chamber following the VW PV3942-2000 test, Milliken’s scavenger tech-nology could reduce the levels of formalde-hyde, acetaldehyde and acrolein. See Graph 1.
These impurities in foam come from deg-radation products formed during foaming, and from raw materials such as polyols. They can be reduced with proper stabilisation and scavenger technology.
De Vis said, ‘We are still working on further versions, but this technology could be the first step in reducing aldehyde emissions.’
Stefano Grassini of Dow Automotive spoke about the complexity involved reducing emis-sions in car interior,s and the OEMs’ different requirements in this matter.
➡ Continued from page 31 Table 1: Asian standards for indoor air quality
Source: Milliken
Substance Test Method OLD China New China (1) Korea Japan (JAMA)(2) GB/T27630 GB/T27630 25˚C for 2 Hrs 23/40˚C for 4.5 hrs 25˚C for 16 hrs 25˚C for 16 hrsFormaldehyde 100 100 210 100Benzene 110 60 30 –Toluene 1,100 1,000 1,000 260Ethyl Benzene 1,500 1,000 10,000 3,800Xylene 1,500 1,000 870 870Styrene 260 260 220 220Acetaldehyde 50 200 – 48Acrolein 50 50 50 –Phenol Glycol Esters/ethers Total VOC – – 400
Note 1: New China in force from 1 Jan 18 Note 2: Exposure limits suggested by Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
Table 2: European air quality test complexity
Source: Dow AutomotiveNote 1: equivalent toluene/g Note 2: front seat cushion, rear seat back Note 3: rear seat cushion
OEM Test Method Limit UnitDaimler Themodesorption DBL 5430 VOC ≤ 400 µg/g VDA 278 FOG ≤ 600 µg/g VDA 276 Odour ≤ 3 Renault Thermodesorption D42 3109 < 100 µg/g (1)
D49 3001 Odour ≤ 2.5 BMW 1m3 chamber GS97014-3 TVOC <2500 µg/m3
VDA270 Odour ≤ 2.5 TA/kgPSA D10 5495 Total VOC (n-C20) < 500 µg (1)
total amine < 200 µg TEDA < 100 µg D10 5517 BTXES Odour ≤ 3.5 Audi Chamber test PV 3942 <10 (2) ppm <15 (3) ppm PV 3900 Odour ≤ 3
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URETHANES TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018
‘Not only do OEMs have their own individ-ual specifications and requirements for emis-sions, odour and related testing standards, the countries in which the cars are used also have their own concentration limits for the specific substances of concern,’ he told the meeting. ‘Polyurethanes are not the only materials used in car interiors, and other materials can also significantly contribute to VOC, FOG and odour.’
He continued, ‘Often, variations within the method being used and between labs have been observed, as well as variations because of possible external interference and potential cross contamination in test samples.’ The mix-ture of products found in the cab is complex, and components come from a number of different sources, he said.
‘Aldehydes found in car interiors can come
from a variety of raw materials used to make polyurethane,’ he said, adding that the level and type of aldehydes found also depends on the way that the raw materials are man-ufactured and purified. Other detected com-pounds such as amines can come from amine catalysts and siloxanes from surfactants.
‘This means that a primary strategy is to have a portfolio of clean raw materials in terms of polyols and a portfolio of clean additives,’ he said. ‘This represents a very powerful toolbox when combined with formu-lation know-how and foaming process control, allowing emissions to be limited.’
Dow’s approach has been to look at im-proving polyols, for example minimising residu-al aldehydes and glycol ethers which can form as by-products during manufacture.
The company has produced a range of ultra-purified polyols. ‘This means they have significantly lower levels of aldehydes and glycol ethers,’ Grassini said. Dow’s internal analysis has shown these new grades have one-tenth of the acetaldehyde and half of the propionaldehyde of earlier grades, he claimed.
These polyols have also more precise functionality, he added, which gives advantag-es including faster network formation as well as improved ageing and comfort characteris-tics of foams. ‘These polyols include a 6,000 molecular weight grade and a high functional-ity grade. There is no change in processability, compared to earlier grades’, he said. ‘All prop-erties are retained in formulations containing the new polyols.’
The second approach was to create new building blocks, Grassini said, which are avail-able under the Specflex Activ brand This is a new additive polyol family with high and spe-cifically balanced catalytic activity that allow the reduction, or even complete elimination, of amine catalysts.
Combining the two technologies will give formulators a more powerful toolbox to work with without altering production processes for the foam, he said.
Looking at a range of tough formula-tions, Clement Barriere, Principal Chemist at Addivant, told delegates about his company’s low VOC, low FOG anit-scorch antioxidants for polyurethane foams.
Barriere said, these are drop-in solutions for the slabstock market and require no in-vestment by customers to change antioxidant packages. ‘Polyol producers prefer liquid anti-oxidants with good miscibility and low viscosi-ty. This makes it easy to produce blends, with good stability for transportation and storage
➡ Continued on page 34
Graph 1: Aldehyde levels in automotive seating foams made with MDI-based system
Source: Milliken
0
100
200
300
400
500
407
75
443
379
96
9
Formaldehyde Acetaldehyde Acrolein
■ Control made with standard polyol system (µg/m³)■ Milliken Scavenger Technology @ 4,000 ppm (µg/m³)
1m³ environmental test chamber (VW, PV3942-2000)
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december 2017/january 2018 urethanes technology international
enabling the polyol blend to retain its initial colour and protect against degraradation dur-ing subsequent processing.’
Antioxidants also help to prevent the com-bustion or heat-triggered discoloration of the foam during production. They should also pro-tect against gas fading caused by interactions with NOx found in foam storage areas and generated by the exhaust gases of vehicles such as fork-lift trucks, he added.
Addivant has carried out trials of its additive on foam with densities between 20 and 25 kg/m³. ‘Foams of this density typically have a very high risk of scorch,’ he explained. In addition, work was done on 40 kg/m³ foams which are more representative of automotive applications. These are less prone to scorch, he said, but because there is more foam per cubic meter, they tend to emit more than the 20 and 25 kg/m³ foams. Consequently, it is harder for these foams to meet emission standards.
Barriere introduced Addivant’s low viscosi-ty Naugard Foamplus LE Series of antioxidants as new formulations for the slabstock market, and showed results of lab-scale tests. The lab-oratory tests were verified by an independent laboratory, he said.
Barriere said that using the Naugard Foamplus LE Series antioxidants it is possible
to reduce FOG emissions by 95% compared to earlier types of antioxidant, he said. This enables compliance with the VDA 278 standard and the same time there is ‘excellent scorch protection in foams with the density of 20 kg/m³.’
‘We also looked at the how antioxidants can help reduce the formation of aldehydes during foaming by interrupting the reactions
that cause them, he said. Using Naugard Foamplus LE series antioxidants can lead to a significant reduction in emissions according to VDA 275 and NES M0402 protocols,’ he said.
‘Several polyol producers and foamers have tested Naugard Foamplus LE Series anti-oxidants under industrial conditions and have achieved good results,’ he said.
➡ Continued from page 33
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urethanes technology international december 2017/january 2018
Cutting a DashCutting and splitting machinery for polyurethane has been at the heart of Fecken-Kirfel’s product offering since the early 1950s. We look at the company, and some of its more recent developments.
The German town of Aachen, near the borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, has had many overlords, from the Romans, who val-ued the town’s hot springs, to Charlemagne, to the present day.
Fecken-Kirfel has, like any company that has been in existence for more than 140 years, had many product focuses. Starting off as a steam powered machinery company for the woollen and textile industries, the busi-ness has found its niche in developing cutting machines for polyurethane foam blocks.
It has also held a strong patent position, which enabled it to protect its inventions from other companies.
The company, which expects sales to top E40m in 2017, has a well-appointed factory on the outskirts of the pretty town, and re-cently invested around E2.5m in a new build-ing and a state of the art powder coating line for its metal components.
The company invests around E1m each year in plant, buildings or development, explained vice-president Francis Pinckers. It produces horizontal and vertical foam cutting machines which, with one exception, are knife based.
Using knifes allows for little waste and very fine cuts, said head of marketing Lars Nelles. The company showed off some rigid foam, which Utech-polyurethane.com/Urethanes Technology International saw being cut at a thickness of 1.1 – 1.2 mm on a machine that was ready for delivery.
The company, which was running a 9-month delivery backlog when visited in the early autumn, produces almost all its compo-nents in house, except for castings, controllers and motors.
It retains details of most of the parts that have gone into each of its machines. More recent parts lists, complete with component serial numbers, are stored electronically, Pinckers said. This gives allows each part to be traced through production and into use. It can be used to make replicas of parts on older machines which have failed, he added.
Fecken-Kirfel also makes a determined effort to provide service and spare parts for very old machines. ‘We had a customer, who bought a machine from us in the 1960s, call us up recently and ask for a duplicate machine. We could have made one, but technology has moved on since then,’ Pinckers said.
Making a blade make the grade F-K buys steel coil in different grades at the right width and depth to make the cutting blades, and welds them to length before chamfering them to a slightly sharper edge.
After chamfering, the blades are nearly ready for installation. They are installed be-tween knife guides to help prevent any devi-ation while cutting to achieve perfect results, Nelles explained.
The chamfered, or partially shaped, blades are shipped, and the final sharpening happens on the cutting machine before its first use.
Pinckers also showed the company’s CNC-controlled metal bending machine. This ena-bles sheets of metal to be folded into shape rather than welding or riveting individual piec-es, which is time consuming, more prone to errors and expensive, he added. The folded metal is used for hollow components such as lightweight housings.
F-K has recently installed an electrostatic powder coating system. It is more efficient than traditional spray painting, because parts can be used within half an hour of coating, compared with half a day to allow for tradi-tional paint to dry, Pinckers said. Additionally, there are no emissions to consider. This is important because, although originally on the
edge of town, the factory on Prager Ring is now surrounded by housing.
Pinckers said that innovations like these, and its regular investments, have enabled the company to stay ahead of the competition. Recent investments include two MAZAK CNC milling centre, including a robotised automa-tion system.
‘The future direction of the company is to develop machines needed in the market, and to keep innovating. We are a machinery manufacturer, but we also realised that ma-chinery is not enough. We needed to expand before and behind the cutting process as well as with appropriate software,’ Pinckers said. ‘We have to think about the need to improve the engagement of our machine with our customers who need a better yield, efficiency and to save costs.’
Cutting machines don’t operate in isolation, however: product has to be handled before and after the cutting process, and this is one area where F-K’s high level of specialisation may have been a drawback. To counteract this, the company has formed a close but informal relationship with Spain’s IPF, another family-owned firm, which allows it to quote for jobs from the end of the foam machine to the block store.
‘Before the agreement with IPF, we were sometimes not approached by foamers who want to buy all of the downstream equip-ment behind the foaming unit from a single source. Now we can supply that equipment, and compete with other firms which offer the same service,’ Pinckers explained. ‘The indus-try appreciates this.’
All the parts to hand inside Fecken-Kirfel
0035.indd 1 06/12/2017 13:49
profileprofilewww.utech-polyurethane.com 35
urethanes technology international december 2017/january 2018
Cutting a DashCutting and splitting machinery for polyurethane has been at the heart of Fecken-Kirfel’s product offering since the early 1950s. We look at the company, and some of its more recent developments.
The German town of Aachen, near the borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, has had many overlords, from the Romans, who val-ued the town’s hot springs, to Charlemagne, to the present day.
Fecken-Kirfel has, like any company that has been in existence for more than 140 years, had many product focuses. Starting off as a steam powered machinery company for the woollen and textile industries, the busi-ness has found its niche in developing cutting machines for polyurethane foam blocks.
It has also held a strong patent position, which enabled it to protect its inventions from other companies.
The company, which expects sales to top E40m in 2017, has a well-appointed factory on the outskirts of the pretty town, and re-cently invested around E2.5m in a new build-ing and a state of the art powder coating line for its metal components.
The company invests around E1m each year in plant, buildings or development, explained vice-president Francis Pinckers. It produces horizontal and vertical foam cutting machines which, with one exception, are knife based.
Using knifes allows for little waste and very fine cuts, said head of marketing Lars Nelles. The company showed off some rigid foam, which Utech-polyurethane.com/Urethanes Technology International saw being cut at a thickness of 1.1 – 1.2 mm on a machine that was ready for delivery.
The company, which was running a 9-month delivery backlog when visited in the early autumn, produces almost all its compo-nents in house, except for castings, controllers and motors.
It retains details of most of the parts that have gone into each of its machines. More recent parts lists, complete with component serial numbers, are stored electronically, Pinckers said. This gives allows each part to be traced through production and into use. It can be used to make replicas of parts on older machines which have failed, he added.
Fecken-Kirfel also makes a determined effort to provide service and spare parts for very old machines. ‘We had a customer, who bought a machine from us in the 1960s, call us up recently and ask for a duplicate machine. We could have made one, but technology has moved on since then,’ Pinckers said.
Making a blade make the grade F-K buys steel coil in different grades at the right width and depth to make the cutting blades, and welds them to length before chamfering them to a slightly sharper edge.
After chamfering, the blades are nearly ready for installation. They are installed be-tween knife guides to help prevent any devi-ation while cutting to achieve perfect results, Nelles explained.
The chamfered, or partially shaped, blades are shipped, and the final sharpening happens on the cutting machine before its first use.
Pinckers also showed the company’s CNC-controlled metal bending machine. This ena-bles sheets of metal to be folded into shape rather than welding or riveting individual piec-es, which is time consuming, more prone to errors and expensive, he added. The folded metal is used for hollow components such as lightweight housings.
F-K has recently installed an electrostatic powder coating system. It is more efficient than traditional spray painting, because parts can be used within half an hour of coating, compared with half a day to allow for tradi-tional paint to dry, Pinckers said. Additionally, there are no emissions to consider. This is important because, although originally on the
edge of town, the factory on Prager Ring is now surrounded by housing.
Pinckers said that innovations like these, and its regular investments, have enabled the company to stay ahead of the competition. Recent investments include two MAZAK CNC milling centre, including a robotised automa-tion system.
‘The future direction of the company is to develop machines needed in the market, and to keep innovating. We are a machinery manufacturer, but we also realised that ma-chinery is not enough. We needed to expand before and behind the cutting process as well as with appropriate software,’ Pinckers said. ‘We have to think about the need to improve the engagement of our machine with our customers who need a better yield, efficiency and to save costs.’
Cutting machines don’t operate in isolation, however: product has to be handled before and after the cutting process, and this is one area where F-K’s high level of specialisation may have been a drawback. To counteract this, the company has formed a close but informal relationship with Spain’s IPF, another family-owned firm, which allows it to quote for jobs from the end of the foam machine to the block store.
‘Before the agreement with IPF, we were sometimes not approached by foamers who want to buy all of the downstream equip-ment behind the foaming unit from a single source. Now we can supply that equipment, and compete with other firms which offer the same service,’ Pinckers explained. ‘The indus-try appreciates this.’
All the parts to hand inside Fecken-Kirfel
0035.indd 1 06/12/2017 13:49
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urethanes technology international december 2017/january 2018
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was poured. This way the effects of flow rate, proportions of chemicals and so on can be connected to the cell structure and shape of a slice of block.
In addition to foaming process info, the blocks themselves are also tracked with in-formation such as date of manufacturing, its readiness for cutting, how efficient the foam-ing process was, or type of foam, he said.
For example, normally professionals talk about shrinkage in very general terms, Vinas said, adding his system measures every block, and the results are quite surprising. Even in the same run, results might be quite different, he said.
To human vision a good block looks flat, but the laser scanning process shows that there are ripples and the height of the block moves in waves along its length.
‘We can measure the impact of the flows, the impact on each wave, which parameters cause or are related to the gain or to the cold flow of the block before and after the curing, when the reaction is complete,’ Vinas said.
As well as ripples, in extreme situations ‘in blocks which are designed to be square some-times the lower part becomes wider and the top part becomes narrower,’ Vinas has found.
Vinas said that the interest in his product extends to raw material makers as there is now an understanding of the impact of changing raw materials during foaming and after storage.
‘We can also look at the effects of changing raw materials in a formulation,’ he added.
‘When customers talk to materials com-panies about shrinkage or defects, they often show simple samples or a formulation; with our process, materials companies can really track this information and at the same time the parameters of the foaming machine at the moment of the incident. The raw materials supplier can then understand what happen when processing his raw materials,’ he said.
Open source collaborationIPF, located in the Basque region of north Spain, collaborated with several other com-panies to develop open-source software that can connect to a wide range of other machin-ery operating systems. ’We have a team of people with different backgrounds working on My Foam Plant inside IPF,’ he said.
‘We don’t talk about versions, we talk about the range of solutions available. They go from a very simple version where you just connect machines. The simplest set up (WGO: what´s going on) – shows which machines are con-nected, how many parts are being made and it shows you in real time what is going on in the factory. This most simple platform shares the same architecture as the most sophisticat-ed version we produce,’ he said.
The WGO version use graphs and numbers
to illustrate what’s happening at the factory. Plant managers can see online or study later when a machine started, how many metres have been produced, how many kilos have been foamed without going into great detail.
Vinas explained that intermediate version, currently unnamed, looks at individual ma-chines. ‘So instead of looking at the whole process, we focus on certain machines. If you have a machine which controls the output of your converting line, we compare the shifts, we compare the efficiency of the machine, we can detect the defect of the machine at early stage to plan a recalibration or a maintenance. We can really analyse a great deal of informa-tion from machine in detail,’ he said.
‘We have been developing this platform for the past 3-4 years. At the beginning, our goal was to connect machines to report the perfor-mance of the process from the raw material to the trimming. It is interesting, but this wasn’t giving very much added value to the customer and we started to focus on what was going to give real benefits’.
The key version of the platform, known internally as ‘the Brain’ but lacking any other designations, ‘collects information from pro-duction, ‘we connect process information into the product cm by cm,’ he said. Now you can focus on an individual block and overview the whole process, the DNA of the block,’ he said.
0036 & 37.indd 2 06/12/2017 13:45
process improvement36 process improvement www.utech-polyurethane.com
december 2017/january 2018 urethanes technology international
Banish the black artsto improve your businessIPF has developed My Foam Plant, a data capture and software system that can save foamers money and increase efficiency of their process. Angel Vinas talks with Simon Robinson.Angel Vinas is a man with a mission: to make the continuous flexible foam industry more profitable and to understand how to produce a good quality block of foam that will give you the best possible cutting yield, under any circumstances, without the black arts.
Vinas’ main weapon in this battle is My Foam Plant, a combination of data capture and processing that can directly link the properties, the performance and the shape of flexible foam blocks to the age of raw materials; formu-lation, pouring, processing, curing and storage conditions in statistically significant ways.
One of the challenges in processing polyure-thane is that there are many, many parameters over which they can be no control. ‘We are pro-ducing a solid out of a liquid in variable atmos-pheric conditions,’ he said. ‘During the process, the formulation, the physical parameters of the machine and the atmospheric conditions will change. As a consequence, the processing of a formula A on a machine B will give you a differ-ent result on a sunny day in Ecuador or a rainy day in England. Nobody is really tracking what is going on across the whole process.’
The industry ‘has the same problem: each new machine set up starts almost from scratch. Typically, there’s a professional on a platform, who cannot look at all the parame-ters,’ who is responsible for producing good quality block foam. Every minute, he pours $500 to $1,000 on a conveyor with little feed-back upon the converting yield of the foam that he is producing.
‘We try to give back this feed-back as soon as possible, for him to better master the foaming process and guarantee a maximum cutting yield from the blocks,’ Vinas said.
Engage the BrainUsing data to control a process that is under-stood by highly educated polymer chemists and process engineers may seem strange to the polyurethane industry, he said, but it is common in other areas such as international stock and currency market trading and in at-tempts to make self-driving cars.
‘My Foam Plant looks at thousands of parameters at the same time and makes the correlations between them,’ Vinas said. The Human brain can understand the correlation between two, three or four parameters, but not between 200 parameters. Our algorithm can calculate which parameters have the greatest impact and in which direction.’
This can feed through directly into the bottom line. ‘The raw material cost is a large driver for our customers and that’s related to efficiency. My Foam Plant will help foamers take control of that process,’ he said.
For each slice of block, you can under-stand the quantities of raw material used, the physical parameters of the foaming machine, and the external conditions during the pro-cess such as the humidity or the pressure, the evolution of the temperature and of the shape during the curing and finally the final shape that will be delivered to the converting department,’ he said.
‘When you connect the process into the product is when you can start the optimisa-tion and the correlation between the process parameters and the final output.
IPF uses two of the most cutting edge in-dustrial ideas: Big data and machine learning to take people and their prejudices out of the equation.
To do this with machine learning, the pro-cess learns how to change the inputs of the foaming process to make better quality foam in more consistently shaped blocks.
‘Nowadays, when companies want to understand the foaming process they need experts,’ Vinas explained.
‘Because they know the chemistry and the physics the experts can understand the pro-cess. My Foam Plant connects process with results using different technologies, and it is not so important now to understand phys-ical chemistry or the relationship between
chemicals and process parameters, because the system finds the correlations. It’s similar to the software used by companies such as Google and Facebook.’
‘The IPF model, collects and stores a lot of inputs, makes correlations, and then the sys-tem detects which parameters have the most effects on the final results. We can start asking My Foam Plant questions.
‘In our latest version, we are focusing on the dimensions of the block, because it relates to quality and efficiency of the cutting process. We try to statistically understand what the im-pacts of input and processing parameters are on the final dimensions of the block and on the final shape of the block. We have already seen interesting facts, such as…• Output differs between a 5-15% compared with planned block shape;• Block height is not constant, having impor-tant variations that only when are tracked you can get the best from the cutting;• Block stabilisation is much longer than we normally assume, and depends on the type of foam and other process conditions; and,• Automatic efficiency measurement differs with manual methods, its more accurate and especially important, all blocks are tracked.
By using a statistical approach, and by tak-ing many measurements per second as the block moves along the conveyor, it becomes possible to accurately link the properties of a portion of the block at as it moves along the conveyor away from the mix head with what was happening at the mix head when it
The processing of a formula A on a
machine B will give you a different result on a sunny day in Ecuador or a rainy day in England. Nobody is really tracking what is going on across the whole processAngel Vinas
0036 & 37.indd 1 06/12/2017 13:45
process improvementprocess improvementwww.utech-polyurethane.com 37
urethanes technology international december 2017/january 2018
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was poured. This way the effects of flow rate, proportions of chemicals and so on can be connected to the cell structure and shape of a slice of block.
In addition to foaming process info, the blocks themselves are also tracked with in-formation such as date of manufacturing, its readiness for cutting, how efficient the foam-ing process was, or type of foam, he said.
For example, normally professionals talk about shrinkage in very general terms, Vinas said, adding his system measures every block, and the results are quite surprising. Even in the same run, results might be quite different, he said.
To human vision a good block looks flat, but the laser scanning process shows that there are ripples and the height of the block moves in waves along its length.
‘We can measure the impact of the flows, the impact on each wave, which parameters cause or are related to the gain or to the cold flow of the block before and after the curing, when the reaction is complete,’ Vinas said.
As well as ripples, in extreme situations ‘in blocks which are designed to be square some-times the lower part becomes wider and the top part becomes narrower,’ Vinas has found.
Vinas said that the interest in his product extends to raw material makers as there is now an understanding of the impact of changing raw materials during foaming and after storage.
‘We can also look at the effects of changing raw materials in a formulation,’ he added.
‘When customers talk to materials com-panies about shrinkage or defects, they often show simple samples or a formulation; with our process, materials companies can really track this information and at the same time the parameters of the foaming machine at the moment of the incident. The raw materials supplier can then understand what happen when processing his raw materials,’ he said.
Open source collaborationIPF, located in the Basque region of north Spain, collaborated with several other com-panies to develop open-source software that can connect to a wide range of other machin-ery operating systems. ’We have a team of people with different backgrounds working on My Foam Plant inside IPF,’ he said.
‘We don’t talk about versions, we talk about the range of solutions available. They go from a very simple version where you just connect machines. The simplest set up (WGO: what´s going on) – shows which machines are con-nected, how many parts are being made and it shows you in real time what is going on in the factory. This most simple platform shares the same architecture as the most sophisticat-ed version we produce,’ he said.
The WGO version use graphs and numbers
to illustrate what’s happening at the factory. Plant managers can see online or study later when a machine started, how many metres have been produced, how many kilos have been foamed without going into great detail.
Vinas explained that intermediate version, currently unnamed, looks at individual ma-chines. ‘So instead of looking at the whole process, we focus on certain machines. If you have a machine which controls the output of your converting line, we compare the shifts, we compare the efficiency of the machine, we can detect the defect of the machine at early stage to plan a recalibration or a maintenance. We can really analyse a great deal of informa-tion from machine in detail,’ he said.
‘We have been developing this platform for the past 3-4 years. At the beginning, our goal was to connect machines to report the perfor-mance of the process from the raw material to the trimming. It is interesting, but this wasn’t giving very much added value to the customer and we started to focus on what was going to give real benefits’.
The key version of the platform, known internally as ‘the Brain’ but lacking any other designations, ‘collects information from pro-duction, ‘we connect process information into the product cm by cm,’ he said. Now you can focus on an individual block and overview the whole process, the DNA of the block,’ he said.
0036 & 37.indd 2 06/12/2017 13:45
process improvement36 process improvement www.utech-polyurethane.com
december 2017/january 2018 urethanes technology international
Banish the black artsto improve your businessIPF has developed My Foam Plant, a data capture and software system that can save foamers money and increase efficiency of their process. Angel Vinas talks with Simon Robinson.Angel Vinas is a man with a mission: to make the continuous flexible foam industry more profitable and to understand how to produce a good quality block of foam that will give you the best possible cutting yield, under any circumstances, without the black arts.
Vinas’ main weapon in this battle is My Foam Plant, a combination of data capture and processing that can directly link the properties, the performance and the shape of flexible foam blocks to the age of raw materials; formu-lation, pouring, processing, curing and storage conditions in statistically significant ways.
One of the challenges in processing polyure-thane is that there are many, many parameters over which they can be no control. ‘We are pro-ducing a solid out of a liquid in variable atmos-pheric conditions,’ he said. ‘During the process, the formulation, the physical parameters of the machine and the atmospheric conditions will change. As a consequence, the processing of a formula A on a machine B will give you a differ-ent result on a sunny day in Ecuador or a rainy day in England. Nobody is really tracking what is going on across the whole process.’
The industry ‘has the same problem: each new machine set up starts almost from scratch. Typically, there’s a professional on a platform, who cannot look at all the parame-ters,’ who is responsible for producing good quality block foam. Every minute, he pours $500 to $1,000 on a conveyor with little feed-back upon the converting yield of the foam that he is producing.
‘We try to give back this feed-back as soon as possible, for him to better master the foaming process and guarantee a maximum cutting yield from the blocks,’ Vinas said.
Engage the BrainUsing data to control a process that is under-stood by highly educated polymer chemists and process engineers may seem strange to the polyurethane industry, he said, but it is common in other areas such as international stock and currency market trading and in at-tempts to make self-driving cars.
‘My Foam Plant looks at thousands of parameters at the same time and makes the correlations between them,’ Vinas said. The Human brain can understand the correlation between two, three or four parameters, but not between 200 parameters. Our algorithm can calculate which parameters have the greatest impact and in which direction.’
This can feed through directly into the bottom line. ‘The raw material cost is a large driver for our customers and that’s related to efficiency. My Foam Plant will help foamers take control of that process,’ he said.
For each slice of block, you can under-stand the quantities of raw material used, the physical parameters of the foaming machine, and the external conditions during the pro-cess such as the humidity or the pressure, the evolution of the temperature and of the shape during the curing and finally the final shape that will be delivered to the converting department,’ he said.
‘When you connect the process into the product is when you can start the optimisa-tion and the correlation between the process parameters and the final output.
IPF uses two of the most cutting edge in-dustrial ideas: Big data and machine learning to take people and their prejudices out of the equation.
To do this with machine learning, the pro-cess learns how to change the inputs of the foaming process to make better quality foam in more consistently shaped blocks.
‘Nowadays, when companies want to understand the foaming process they need experts,’ Vinas explained.
‘Because they know the chemistry and the physics the experts can understand the pro-cess. My Foam Plant connects process with results using different technologies, and it is not so important now to understand phys-ical chemistry or the relationship between
chemicals and process parameters, because the system finds the correlations. It’s similar to the software used by companies such as Google and Facebook.’
‘The IPF model, collects and stores a lot of inputs, makes correlations, and then the sys-tem detects which parameters have the most effects on the final results. We can start asking My Foam Plant questions.
‘In our latest version, we are focusing on the dimensions of the block, because it relates to quality and efficiency of the cutting process. We try to statistically understand what the im-pacts of input and processing parameters are on the final dimensions of the block and on the final shape of the block. We have already seen interesting facts, such as…• Output differs between a 5-15% compared with planned block shape;• Block height is not constant, having impor-tant variations that only when are tracked you can get the best from the cutting;• Block stabilisation is much longer than we normally assume, and depends on the type of foam and other process conditions; and,• Automatic efficiency measurement differs with manual methods, its more accurate and especially important, all blocks are tracked.
By using a statistical approach, and by tak-ing many measurements per second as the block moves along the conveyor, it becomes possible to accurately link the properties of a portion of the block at as it moves along the conveyor away from the mix head with what was happening at the mix head when it
The processing of a formula A on a
machine B will give you a different result on a sunny day in Ecuador or a rainy day in England. Nobody is really tracking what is going on across the whole processAngel Vinas
0036 & 37.indd 1 06/12/2017 13:45
dates & data38 dates & data www.utech-polyurethane.com
DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 UREthANEs tEChNologY •international•
Readers are strongly advised to confirm details with event organisers before making travel arrangements.
about the graph
Key Events
29 January -2 FebruarySprayfoam EXPOMobile, AlabamaArthur R Outlaw Convention CenterContact: Mickey Riesenberg Tel: +1 800 523 6154Email: [email protected]
21 February FSK Day Lightweight PURKraussMaffei, Munich, Germany Tel: +49 711-993 751 0 Email: [email protected]
25 February-1 MarchWorld Congress on Adhesion and Related Phenomena +Adhesion Society Annual MeetingCatamaran Resort HotelSan Diego, California Email: [email protected]
27 February-1 MarchPolyurethanexExpocentre Fair GroundsMoscowContact: Konstantin A. FateevTel: +7 495 988-1620
Diary
Source: CPI/IAL
Nafta: PU production by product type 2014-16 (M lbs)
2018
SHANGHAI WORLD EXPOEXHIBITION AND CONVENTION CENTRE
6-8 MarchEcobuildExCelLondonTel: +44 20 3011 2540Email: [email protected]
6-8 MarchJECParis Nord Villepinte, ParisContact: Anne-Manuele HebertTel: +33 1 58 36 43 93
28-31 March Interzum GuangzhouPazhou ComplexContact: Karen LeeTel: +86 20 8755 2468-12Email: [email protected]
10-12 AprilAircarft Interiors ExpoHamburg Messe, GermmanyContact: Karl McbrideTel: +44 20 8910 7046Email: [email protected]
23-25 April Adhesives and Sealant Council
Spring ExpoHyatt Regency Miami, USContact: Malinda ArmstrongTel: +1 301 986 9700Email: [email protected]
23-24 MayPFAVinoy Renaissance Hotel & ResortSaint Petersburg, FloridaContact: Kay WrightTel: +1 865 657 9661
5-6 June Global Automotive components and suppliers ExpoStuttgart, Germany Contact: Simon WillaradTel: + 44 1306 743744Email: [email protected]
18-19 June Insulation Expo 2018Nottingham, UKTel: + 44 1948 759 351
29-31 May, 2018 UTECH Europe 2018MECC Maastricht Exhibition & Congress Centre Contact: Debbie HershfieldTel: + 1 303 608 0231Email: [email protected]
Steady US PU growthAll product sectors using polyurethane grew between 2014 and 2016, with the exception of RIM, according to figures from IAL and presented at the CPI meeting in New Orleans in October.
Growth in the period was closer 4.6%/year in the period according to the consultants, while Canada and Mexico lagged behind.
The rigid foam sector saw the greatest growth, which is driven by greater demands for insulation and more weather-proof housing in the US. The number of new housing starts in the US grew by 56% in 2016 compared to the previous year and the number of completions rose by 9.5%.
The End Use Market Survey of the Polyurethanes Industry in the U.S., Canada and Mexico in 2016 was carried out by IAL Consultants on behalf of the ACC Center for the Polyurethanes Industry and is available at www.americanchemistry.com/polyurethanes . It is a comprehensive study based on about 250 interviews with a range of different groups in the value chain including the raw materials producers, polyols and isocyanate producers; systems houses; and end users, who provided a real grass-roots experience of consumer trends. Full copies of the report are sold with customizable data tables.
1-3 August 2018PU ChinaShanghai World Expo CentreShanghai, China,Contact: Debbie HershfieldTel: +1 330 608 0231Email: [email protected]
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
■ 2016 ■ 2014
Rigid foamFlex slabBinders
CoatingsFlex moulded
Sealants & adhesivesElastomers
TPURIM
0038.indd 26 06/12/2017 15:41
Maastricht, Netherlands
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®™Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company (“Dow”) or an affiliated company of Dow
Dow Corning® Polyurethane Additives (PUA) technologies will be sold by Dow under the VORASURF™ brand name. To help ensure a smooth transition, updated product names will feature Dow Corning’s “DC” and retain the original product numbers (DC 193, DC 2525, DC 5982, etc.).
So now, in addition to the proven silicone surfactants you depend on to produce flexible, rigid, and microcellular polyurethane foams, you’ll also have access to a rich portfolio of global polyurethane solutions, systems, and capabilities.
DOW CORNING® POLYURETHANE ADDITIVES ARE NOW
NEWNAME
SAME
POLYURETHANE ADDITIVESVORASURF™
PRODUCTS
CONTACT YOUR DOW REPRESENTATIVE TODAY FOR MORE INFORMATION!
Untitled-1 1 11/22/17 1:30 PMUntitled-1 1 05/12/2017 07:54