GREENOCK, SCOTLAND (April 10, 2007) -- The export of huge amounts of British plastics packaging waste to Asia, particularly China, is leading to a growing shortage of polyethylene scrap available for recyclers in the United Kingdom.

Unlike other European Union countries, Britain allows exported plastic scrap as well as material reprocessed nationally, to count towards its quota under the EU’s Packaging Waste Directive legislation. As a result, U.K. recyclers are having a hard time competing for a share of the recycling stream.

They warn that the problem is leading to a serious reduction in Britain’s recycling capacity.

In January, British Polythene Industries plc, Europe’s top PE film producer and a leading waste recycler in Britain, closed plants in England and Scotland and stopped making some products that rely on recycled feedstock.

Greenock-based BPI cut almost 30 jobs with the closing of its Stockton on Tees, England, plant. That facility made plastic sacks using recycled content.

A BPI film recycling facility in Greenock employing about 20 closed in February.

“Our number of accredited recycling sites has been reduced from seven … [in 1998] to only three now,” pointed out BPI Chairman Cameron McLatchie in his annual review for 2006.

“This is distinctly unfavorable when compared with schemes operating in other countries within the [European Community], which have been devised to promote the recycling of scrap locally,” he said. Systems elsewhere have led to a “thriving” recycling sector in Europe.

McLatchie pointed out how the picture has changed in recent years. In 2001, United Kingdom recyclers handled around three quarters of Britain’s plastics waste. Last year, more than two thirds of the waste was exported to Asia, he said.

“The United Kingdom government would do well to re-examine the U.K. system and modify it to promote increased recycling of waste within the U.K.,” he said.

Meanwhile, BPI also has closed a film extrusion plant in Scunthorpe, England, with a loss of nearly 40 jobs. That plant made film for produce and deep-freeze packaging. Only last year, the plant added an advanced three-layer coextrusion line. At the time, BPI said the machine was essential to meet increasing demand.

Company officials declined comment.

SINGAPORE (September 25, 2007) -- Thermoplastic products are enjoying strong demand growth, largely driven by the automobile industry, which is replacing existing plastic products, says Sam Angove, associate of the Nexant ChemSystems Inc.

The global average annual growth for polyolefin-based thermoplastic elastomers (POE) is projected at 10.3 percent a year between 2006 and 2011, he said at Innovation in Thermoplastic Elastomers, a conference held September 10-11 in Singapore.

This year’s thermoplastic elastomer demand is projected at 412,000 metric tons, up from 365,000 metric tons last year and 307,000 metric tons in 2005, according to Angove.

Demand growth for compounded thermoplastic polyolefins (TPOs) is forecast at 4.5 percent through to 2011, he said. Compounded TPO demand will reach 604,000 metric tons this year, from 576,000 metric tons last year and 554,000 metric tons in 2005.

Thermoplastic vulcanizate (TPV) demand is projected to grow by 7.6 percent per year between 2006 and 2011. TPV demand is projected to be 231,000 metric tons this year, up from 210,000 metric tons last year and 191,000 metric tons in 2005.

Likewise, the in-situ thermoplastic olefinics demand is projected to grow by 4.2 percent per year during the 2006-2011 period. Angove said in-situ thermoplastic olefinics demand is projected to reach 376,000 metric tons this year, up from 360,000 metric tons last year and 343,000 metric tons in 2005.

Angove said 50 percent of TPV demand in 2006 came from the automotive sector, 20 percent from building and construction, 10 percent from consumer goods, 5 percent from wire and cable and the rest from miscellaneous applications.

The firm “worked diligently for a number of years to improve the performance of its Bayonne business,” AGC President Masumi Suehiro said in a September 27 news release. But the firm ultimately decided it was “no longer viable” to operate the plant.

The plant -- which also produces fluorinated solvents -- is set to close December 31. AGC will move its headquarters to Exton, Pennsylvania, where it operates a technical service center. The firm also will continue to operate a fluoropolymer compounding plant in Thorndale, Pennsylvania.

Fluoropolymer resins made in Bayonne are processed into sheets, tubes and tapes for semiconductor and auto parts.

Although sales volumes remain strong, selling prices for AGC’s fluoropolymers are unable to keep up, mostly because of lower-priced import resin from Russia and China, said John Bonner, AGC vice president of operations.

“The average selling price actually was higher 10 years ago than it is today,” said Bonner, who’s been with the firm 18 years.

Higher raw material costs also affected the plant, which has annual capacity of about 4,000 metric tons. Of that amount, 20-30 percent is used by the Thorndale facility.

The plant sits on a 15-hectare parcel, half of which is being sold to a developer that plans to build a shopping mall, Bonner said.

AGC Chemicals, based in Bayonne, is a unit of Asahi Glass Group, a Tokyo-based conglomerate with annual sales of $13 billion (97.6 billion yuan). The Thorndale compounding plant will process material imported from Asahi-owned companies in Japan.

Asahi Glass acquired the Bayonne plant in 1999 when it bought the fluoropolymers business of Imperial Chemical Industries plc. ICI built the plant in 1965.

EBERMANNSDORF, GERMANY (September 25, 2007) -- Zhafir Plastics Machinery GmbH and its parent company, Haitian International Holdings Ltd., will introduce two new lines of all-electric injection molding machines at K

2007.The first, unveiled at a September 19 news conference at Zhafir’s headquarters in Ebermannsdorf, has the trade name Venus, and is an upgrade from Haitian’s existing HTD series.

The basic concept of injection molding revolves around the ability of a thermoplastic material to be softened by heat and to harden when cooled. In most operations, granular material (the plastic resin) is fed into one end of the cylinder (usually through a feeding devices known as a hopper), heated and softened (plasticized or plasticated), forced out the other end of the cylinder, while it is still in the form of a melt, through a nozzle into a relatively cool mold held closed under pressure. Here, the melt cools and hardens until fully set-up. The mold is then opened, the piece ejected, and the sequence repeated.

Thus, the significant elements of an injection molding machine become: 1) the way in which the melt is plasticized (softened) and forced into the mold (called the injection unit); 2) the system for opening the mold and closing it under pressure (called the clamping unit); 3) the type of mold used; 4) the machine controls.
Methods of melting and injecting the plastic differ from one machine to another and are constantly being improved. Conventional machines use a cylinder and piston to do both jobs.
① This method simplifies machine construction but makes control of injection temperatures and pressures an inherently difficult problem. Other machines use a plasticating extruder to melt the plastic and piston to inject it while some have been designed to use a screw for both jobs. Nowadays, sixty percent of the machines use a reciprocating screw, 35% a plunger (concentrated in the smaller machine sizes), and 5% a screw pot.
Many of the problems connected with injection molding arises because the densities of polymers change so markedly with temperature and pressure. At high temperatures, the density of a polymer is considerably lower than at room temperature, provided the pressure is the same. Therefore, if molds were filled at atmospheric pressure, "shrinkage" would make the molding deviate from the shape of the mold.
To compensate for this poor effect, molds are filled at high pressures.
② The pressure compresses the polymer and allows more materials to flow into the mold. Shrinkage is reduced and better quality moldings are produced.