Plastics & Rubber World - May/June 2019 - 15

ireland

extends back to 1981. The location serves
as the centre of excellence for group plastics production, which is shared across
10 sites around the world. Kiernan says
that slightly more than half of the plant's
output is related to the medtech sector,
with the remainder focusing on automotive parts.
"We position ourselves as high-volume
scientific injection moulders," Kiernan explains. "That means we use cutting-edge
techniques to design parts and tooling.
We specialise in modelling and predicting mould flow. Studies completed
with Irish Manufacturing Research have
shown these are incredibly accurate. It's
a big advantage, we can take very tricky
products and successfully manufacture
them," he adds.
Louis Goor, managing director at Dublin-based JL Goor, has additional background as to the prevalence of medical
moulding in Ireland.
"There's a long history with US pharmaceutical companies here. There was a
free-trade zone in Shannon, which meant
no corporation tax for companies moving
into the area. Language, history, it all came
together to support the pattern of investment and it's snowballed from there."
Goor now heads up the company originally started by his father in 1983. With
the formation of JL Goor Materials in 1999
as a separate division from JL Goor Machinery, the group now works together to
serve the Irish plastics market.
Goor says that while total material
volume usage across medical device production is not as high as in other sectors,
there are other factors in play. "While total
raw material volumes are not so high in
comparison to other industry sectors, it is
very high value."
"Medical is 'the gig' here," he adds with
some emphasis.

Material issues

JL Goor Materials is now headed up by
managing director Gearoid Clarke, who
takes up the material supply story.
"When the [materials] company was
first formed in 1999, we had the Exxon
polymer distributorship. Along with our
other customers, we supplied PET for production of bottles at Coca-Cola. There was
some additional business in automotive,
medical, and some aerospace in Northern
Ireland. But things really kicked off when
Exxon bought Mobil [also in 1999]."
Clarke goes on to explain that with that
oil company merger, polymer supplies
started to arrive from a production plant
in France. This helped support company
growth, to where JL Goor Materials now
commands a 10% share of the Irish polymer market.
More recently, shale gas production
has seen polymer development move
back to the US. This has supported new
production plants which have pushed total annual capacity to approximately 2.6m
tonnes. A large portion of this is made up

trend technologies in Mullingar specialises in medical and automotive plastics

louis Goor (left) and Gearoid Clarke of Jl Goor
of metallocene products, ideal for plastic
packaging.
In addition, Sasol, the South African
state oil producer and another key partner of JL Goor Materials, has opened up a
new $10bn site for production of hexene
C6 materials. This will create a new stream
of raw material into Europe, Ireland and
the UK.
"It helps when you're a distributor,
going to a customer with a very strong
portfolio of products. There's the cheaper C4, then C6 and C8 [co-monomer].
This should serve as the start of a strong
growth period for us," explains Clarke.
The ready availability of advanced, high
quality products in Ireland virtually eliminates any need for local Irish polymer
production. But US-based RTP is still planning to start compounding operations in
Ireland, although there has been considerable local pushback over the proposed
plant.
"While there have been some complaints from local residents, there have
also been some mistruths circulated
about the plans," says Clarke. "There is
zoning in place for the plant and, while
it's not been mentioned, there was an injection moulding facility previously on the
site.
"The factory is not going to produce
polluting products, there's not going to be
anything going into the waste stream. And
the plant has the biggest [air] scrubber
you could need for compounding. In fairness, the plant will be operating 24 hours,
but there'll be compliance with all related
restrictions," he points out.

›› Continued on page 16
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