Plastics News 2017 Show Daily - October 20, 2017 - 10

10 * Plastics News, October 20, 2017

FAKUMA SHOW DAILY

By Frank Esposito
Plastics News Staff
ForTii is Royal DSM's favorite
number at Fakuma.
The Dutch materials maker is
promoting a new grade of the
high-performance nylon, called
ForTii Ace, for water management
care at the event. The material, introduced last year at K 2016, was
developed for demanding drinking water applications. A water
management grade of DSM's Xytron-brand PPS compounds also
is available.
"Water consumption is increasing globally," Joost d'Hooghe,
DSM's Europeon commercial
director, said in an interview at
Fakuma. The new ForTii grade
"completes our portfolio in water
management," he added.
The ForTii Ace grade has 30
percent glass fiber content and
has proven superior retention
of properties in long-term water
contact, officials said.
Tests carried out confirm that
ForTii Ace WX51-FC also has superior hydrolysis resistance, main-

Plastics News photo by Caroline Seidel

ForTii adds up for DSM
Royal DSM
Hall B4
Booth 4408
taining its strength for a much
longer period than alternative
materials. Its overall resistance to
most chemicals at elevated temperatures also is very good, officials said.
ForTii also is strong in consumer electronics, according to Tamin
Sidiki, global electronics marketing director. A high-temperature
grade of the material can withstand temperatures of up to 160˚C
and offer performance similar to
PEEK.
For structural parts, ForTii can
provide both temperature and
chemical resistance, according to
Tim Vorage, automotive program
manager. ForTii Ace also has been
commercialized in a part for a
weed trimmer.
DSM employs 25,000 worldwide
and has annual sales of around 10
billion euros (US$11.8 billion).

Tim Vorage, Royal DSM's global growth manager for ForTii Automotive, at the company's booth at Fakuma.

Ascend boosting production of
nylon 6/6 resins, feedstocks
Ascend Performance Materials
LLC plans to add capacity for multiple products, including nylon 6/6
resins.
Houston-based Ascend first will
add capacity for adiponitrile feedstock at its plant in Decatur, Ala.,
said Scott Rook, nylon commercial
operations vice president, in an
interview at Fakuma. He declined
to provide details of the expansion
but said that the project will create new jobs and "will meet [Ascend's] needs."
Rook estimated that the global
nylon 6/6 market will need an estimated 385 million pounds of annual adiponitrile capacity in the next
five years. "Capacity is very tight
in the industry," he said.
Over the next two to three years,
Ascend will add production capacity for nylon 6/6 resins as well as
for hexamethylenediamine (HDM)
and adipic acid feedstocks. The
firm is seeing double-digit demand
growth for its resins from automotive and other markets.
"We're ramping up capacity to
support the growth of the industry," Rook said. Ascend makes
nylon 6/6 resins in Pensacola, Fla.,
and Greenwood, S.C., and compounds based on nylon 6/6 in Pensacola and Foley, Ala.
At Fakuma, Ascend introduced
a new high-performance grade of
its Vydyne-brand nylon 6/6 compounds. The new grade is aimed

By Shahrzad Pourriahi
Plastics News Europe
Plastics News photo by Caroline Seidel

By Frank Esposito
Plastics News Staff

Dow Performance Silicones
launches new additive

Scott W. Rook from Ascend Performance Materials LLC.

Ascend Performance
Materials LLC
Hall A4, Booth 4119
at unattended appliances such as
washers and dryers.
Officials said the new grade
"will bring extra safety" to electrical connectors used in those appliances. In addition to excellent
electrical and flammability properties, the new Vydyne grade also
exhibits high ductility and elonga-

tion at break, they added, providing engineers with greater freedom when designing parts such as
living hinges and snap fits.
The new unreinforced, flame-retardant compound also has superior melt flow and requires lower
pressure to fill molds, reducing
cycle times and production costs,
officials said.
Ascend employs 3,000 worldwide. Private equity firm SK Capital Partners of New York has
owned Ascend since 2009, when it
bought the integrated nylon business of Solutia Inc.

Dow Performance Silicones,
part of DowDuPont Inc.'s materials sciences division, has
launched a new plastics additive
at Fakuma that delivers long-term
slip performance without migration for processing of biaxially
oriented polypropylene films.
According to Christophe Paulo, global segment leader, plastic
additives, the HMB-6301 Masterbatch, which is currently patent-pending, is aimed at high-end
packaging solutions that use lamination, metalization and paper
effect.
"When you take a BOPP film,
you stretch in two directions.
Usually, you add a processing additive to reduce friction and slip
agents. These additives migrate
by default. You add them to the
core of the material, and they
come to the surface within 24 to
36 hours to play the role of slip
agents. But they migrate in both
directions through the layers of
materials," Paulo said.
But when you need a slip property, you need it on one side of
the film.
"That is because you want to
print or metallize the other side
of the film and you do not want
the agents to migrate there," he
said.
With a standard agent, usually
a barrier is added to avoid migration. But the new Dow additive
doesn't require that.
"With our additive, you don't

put it into the core of the material. You put it on the layer, where
you need the slip property. And
that's it; you use it at a far lower
concentration," Paulo added.
While the material itself is
more expensive than the standard slip agents on the market,
Paulo insists it will be cost-efficient as it will increase productivity.
In fact, a major European packaging company has been trialing
the product and has reported a
30 percent increase in efficiency,
according to Paulo.
Currently producing the additives at its production facility in
Saint-Luarent-du-Pont, near the
French Alps, Dow Performance
Silicones sees ASEAN as a key
market where a majority of films
are produced.
According to Paulo, Dow Performance Silicones has been introducing new additives into the
market every four to six months
for the past four years, showing
an 18 percent compound annual
growth over the period.
The company is also increasing its R&D efforts in the additives segment.
"Our R&D people were usually split between additives and
ready-to-use types of materials
such as TPEs. The split, up until
a recent past, was 40 percent to
60 percent, respectively. With the
growth in the additives business,
the split has now reversed, with
work on additives covering more
than 65 percent of activities," he
said.

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