Plastics & Rubber World - July/August 2019 - 30

distribution

›› Continued from page 29

but it's foolproof. Using masterbatch,
the colour might not be perfect, there's
potential for inconsistency and that can
translate to wastage."
He says that a large multinational company has recently elected to use Distrupol
Colour, simply due to the compounded
polymer being able to deliver a consistent,
repeatable shot colour. "They can't have
any colour deviation and this is the only
way to guarantee that," he says.

BaCk to Brexit

Distrupol Colour is a range of
compounded polymers with integral
pigment

Polymer warehousing in the Uk now
stands at balanced to tight

Parts under pressure

echnical support is a key element
within the distributor business matrix. While this can be as basic as
defining which material is best-suited for a
given project, it can be expanded into a full
part solution package, as Distrupol's business development manager, Simon Clegg,
explains.
"We were approached by a company
which was having issues with a polymer
product. The original material manufacturer had recently made a change to the basic
composition and parts produced using the
new polymer were failing," he says.
In application, the parts were being subjected to extreme water pressures, ranging
from 3 bar to up to 16 bar. Made from
PPO, the parts were unable to match the
required performance criteria and, based
on available product range, the company's
current distributor was unable to offer a
suitable solution.
"Based on mechanical load, stress, this
needed an engineering solution," says
Clegg.
Distrupol put forward Zytel HTN, a
semi-crystalline PPA from Dupont, as a replacement for the amorphous PPO used to
produce the original parts. But this was not
a like-for-like switch. "We needed to engineer tooling adjustments, gate designs and
running systems," says Clegg. In addition,

Each of the three companies covered in this
feature have similar ordering processes,
where electronic submissions can be filed
for repeat orders and a team of sales staff
advise on selection of specialty products.
"That's where service comes in," says
Distrupol's James Stanton. "Each distributor generally works with a key supply
partner, but a lot of those polymers are
largely interchangeable. So service can be
the differentiator."
He adds that while some companies
have operated full online ordering systems, they don't lend themselves to the
customer service ethos. "We have about
4,000 different products," says Stanton.
"We think it's better a customer discuss
their needs with our very knowledgeable
staff, instead of pointing them to a portal."
Essentially, working to define the exact material a customer needs to support

successful manufacturing helps to head
off future problems, which further serves
to build customer trust.
Over the run up to the original Brexit leave date (29 March), customers were
looking to stock additional material to
ensure consistent availability. That warehousing and logistics function was another element within the service offering.
The demand for warehousing served
to push up prices, but since then the storage market has softened, as Mike Boswell
points out. "We brought in significant inventory prior to the end of March, but
I'd say warehousing is balanced to tight.
Going forward, we'll be working with our
business partners - we don't know the
Brexit end story as yet - and we'll make
adjustments as necessary."
At Polydist, Batchelor says the company is happy to hold stock and deliver as
the customer requires. But as he settles
into his new role, he'll be looking more
closely at the company cost structure. "I'll
be benchmarking us against our competition when it comes to service."
In the end, he's not in the game for the
feel-good factor. "I started out as a cost
engineer in automotive. It was an excellent foundation, I learned early on that
companies like these weren't in business
to make products or deliver a service.
They are there maximise value and in the
end, make some profit." he says.

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Zytel HtN is a semi-crystalline PPa from Dupont
oil heaters had to be fitted to raise the tool
temperature from about 80°C to 140°C to
maintain the melt structure.
In testing, the previous PPO parts had
failed within the low-thousands of cycles.
Under pressure-pulse testing, the new parts
made from PPA tested into the tens of thousands, but Clegg thought the material could
achieve still better performance.
"We decided to further open up the gates
and runners on the tool so we could really
pack the material in. We used the Moldex3D

software to simulate material flow; it's easy
to have voids, porosity if the process is not
spot on," explains Clegg. The parts produced using this improved manufacturing
process tested into the millions of cycles
before failing.
"We involved Dupont, in terms of finite
element analysis. With this project we had
the full spectrum of support, from manufacturer, distributor, customer. This is the
full polymer distributor support process in
action," says Clegg.

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Plastics & Rubber World - July/August 2019

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