ORLANDO, FLA. (April 3, 8:30 p.m. ET) — Extruder maker American Maplan Corp. of McPherson, Kan., now is known as Battenfeld-Cincinnati USA (Booth 911).
Parent company Battenfeld-Cincinnati Austria GmbH changed its name in 2010 for the K Show to introduce the new brand to market, said Judith Lebic, head of marketing.
“We did that very carefully,” Lebic said in an April 3 interview. The company in 2010 also structured into three divisions: Infrastructure, Construction and Packaging. B-C is making sure NPE2012 visitors know about the new branding.
The company introduced the Eotek extruded profile during its open house on Monday night. B-C USA is in an alliance with Eovations LLC of Bay City, Mich., where the composite profiles are extruded for use in the construction industry. Profiles are formed from standard thermoplastic resin and fiber.
But Kurt Waldhauer, president and CEO of B-C USA, said that the technology addresses many issues with traditional wood composites in the industry. The extruded oriented technology combines a functional mineral component with a thermal plastic resin in equal parts yielding a fully fiberized article. The product therefore is highly resistant to rain, ice, snow and degradation from the elements. The product also is not susceptible to mold, mildew or insect infection.
Moreover, the strength of the product makes it a possibility in structural applications in building and construction.
Waldhauer said that the housing market of course bottomed out. The PVC pipe sector will show some improvement over last year. While that market traditionally has followed the GDP, Waldhauer said that the current market is performing slightly above GDP. In HDPE, natural gas and fracking are creating high demand. There are many capacity expansions.
“Things are starting to roll,” he said.
In addition, 100-inch pipe is getting to be in demand. There is interest in the United States for applications in water outfalls, for example. B-C’s infrastructure division has successfully placed more than 30 large diameter pipes since 2010, officials said. One of the recent orders was from Pipelife Norge of Stathelle, Norway, for 2,500 mm.
During NPE, B-C introduced solEX and twinEX extruders, both with the goal of increasing efficiencies. SolEX is a series of high performance 40D single-screw extruders for high density polyethylene and polypropylene pipe extrusion. The extruders are available in five sizes with screw diameters from 45 to 120 mm. Features include high output with low melt temperature. The drive train and processing unit enables energy consumption reduction of about 15 percent.
The twinEX series of parallel twin-screw extruders consists of four machines in sizes from 78 to 135 mm, which the company touts as perfect for production of pipe and profiles.
For Packaging, B-C showcased a Multi-Touch roll stack that is particularly suitable for PP sheet extrusion. Multi-Touch allows for a space saving solution rather than widening the line for higher outputs, officials said. The sheet passes through a number of polishing nips. The first two are larger than the following for optimal cooling and transmission that lead to higher transparency and surface gloss. Because of its modular design, the Multi-Touch roll stack can be adapted to the expected throughput by adding more rolls.
“We can add or subtract rolls based on requirements,” Waldhauer said.
