All Videos

Displayed chronologically (based on date of posting)

Material Insights: May 21, 2011
A compounder's plan to restore a 105-year-old mill building is featured in this week's Material Insights video. Plastics Group of America has acquired the 240,000 square-foot building in Woonsocket, R.I. The firm now plans to spend more than $1 million to renovate the site, which had been vacant for several years and hadn't been used for manufacturing in about 20 years. Plastics Group plans to be using part of the site by the end of the year, while maintaining its existing 65,000 square foot production plant about a mile away. Acquisitions and expansions from Mitsui Chemicals and its Prime Polymer joint venture also are featured in this week's video. Prime Polymer - owned by Mitsui and Idemitsu Kosan - is buying Brazilian polypropylene compounder Produmaster, as well as adding capacity at compounding plants in Ohio, Mexico and China. Those moves will add a total of 135 million pounds of PP compounding capacity. The video wraps up with news that engineering resins compounder RTP will almost double the size of the compounding plant it opened just last year in Ladenburg, Germany. The expanded plant will cover 105,000 square feet. The project will include the transfer of manufacturing equipment that Winona, Minn.-based RTP acquired earlier this year from Clariant International.

Material Insights: May 14, 2011
Westlake Chemical's withdrawal of its $1.2 billion bid for Georgia Gulf is featured in this week's Material Insights video. Atlanta-based Georgia Gulf had rejected the second of Houston-based Westlake's two offers on Feb. 1. Nothing further had happened until May 4, when Westlake officially pulled its offer. Westlake now will sell off the stake of almost 5 percent of Georgia Gulf's common stock that it had acquired. The deal would have created North America's second-largest PVC resin maker. PFB Corp.'s purchase of the performance styrenics business of Nova Chemicals also is featured in this week's video. Nova will receive an undisclosed equity stake in PFB in exchange for the business, which has annual sales of almost $330 million and makes expanded polystyrene and styrenic copolymers at plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Both Nova and PFB are based in Calgary, Alberta. This week's video wraps up with news that Ineos Group is looking for a buyer for its high density polyethylene plants in France and Italy. The plants - in Sarralbe, France, and Rosignano, Italy — each have about 440 million pounds of annual capacity, but lack integration in feedstocks. Ineos acquired both plants in 2005 when it bought the Innovene business of British Petroleum.

Material Insights: May 7, 2011
A two-month increase in North American prices for PVC resin is featured in this week's Material Insights video. Regional prices increased by 2 cents per pound in February and another 2 cents in March, according to buyers contacted by Plastics News. PVC prices now are up a total of 7 cents so far in 2012. Higher feedstock costs and increasing demand for PVC -- up 13 percent in the US and Canada in the first two months of the year -- are behind the increases. Sales of PVC into rigid pipe and tubing were up 48 percent in that two-month period. Chevron Phillips' selection of Old Ocean, Texas, as the site for two new polyethylene plants also is featured in the video. The firm already operates a petrochemical facility there. The new plants are set to open in 2017 and will have 2.2 billion pounds of combined annual capacity. Officials with Chevron Phillips said newfound supplies of natural gas throughout North America are allowing the new PE plants to be built. The video wraps up with a look at a pair of acquisitions by New York private equity firm Arsenal Capital. The firm bought pigment dispersion makers Plasticolors and Color trend, and will combine the two firms to create a new company called Chromaflo Technologies. The combined firm will have annual sales of about $250 million and, according to Arsenal, will be the industry's largest independent maker of global pigment dispersions.

Checking out the exhibit buzz during NPE
From basketballs to flash mobs and out-of-this world exhibits, check out a a sampling of exhibit hall happenings that generated buzz during NPE2012.

Material Insights: April 30, 2012
Price changes for North American high-impact polystyrene and PET bottle resin are featured in this week's Material Insights video. Regional prices for HIPS increased an average of two cents per pound in March. mainly because of higher prices for butadiene feedstock. For PET bottle resin, a 3-cent April price drop negated a 1-cent increase that the market saw in March. The April drop was caused by lower prices for paraxylene and ethykene glycol feedstock. More nylon 12 resin alternatives also are included in this week's video. A nylon 12 shortage is expected because of a late March fatal fire and explosion at a feedstock plant in Germany. Now, Ticona is offering its acetal and polyphenylene sulfide resins and Rhodia, DSM and DuPont are offering various nylon grades as replacements for nylon 12, which is a key resin used in automotive fuel lines. The video wraps up with news of Sabic breaking ground on a 645,000-square-foot technology center in Kangqiao, China, near Shanghai. The $100 million center will employ 400 when completed in 2013. Sabic's Innovative Plastics business also announced upcoming capacity additions for polycarbonate resin, compounds and film.

Rexam Mold lauds teamwork
Uniting the knowledge of each worker at Rexam Mold Manufacturing, from the journeyman toolmaker to the apprentice, from the designer to the worker on the floor, makes a better mold and makes it faster, said Len Graham, business unit leader for RMM. Mold makers like RMM must deliver consistency with every single tool. If just one part in that tool doesn’t perform to precise requirements, the entire qualification process may be held up or a company even may need to repeat the costly process a second time to meet Food and Drug Administration requirements. State-of-the-art drilling, wire electric discharge machines and robotics equipment can deliver consistent products, but using them correctly and skillfully requires upfront knowledge and information that only the experts on the floor can deliver. A true mold-manufacturing system requires everyone at the company to think as a team, he said. That system must be able to tap into the best ideas of each person to create a better company that benefits everyone. “Once the guys knew that was the direction they were going, they were on board,” said Jack Fiorito, special tooling manager. The Buffalo Grove operation, which employs 90, makes medical-packaging tools.

Material Insights: April 23, 2012
Possible replacement materials for nylon 12 resin are featured in this week's Material Insights video. Nylon 12 replacements are needed since supplies of that material are expected to be short after an accident at a plant making a key feedstock in Germany. Nylon 12 maker Arkema is offering its own nylon 10/10 and 10/12 resins as possible replacements. Materials firms DuPont and Radici also have alternate nylon grades available, according to officials with those firms. The selection of a site for Dow Chemical Co.’s new ethylene cracker also is featured in this week's video. The new cracker will be in Freeport, Texas, which already is the site of Dow's largest integrated manufacturing site. The new cracker will open in 2017 and will have 3.3 billion pound of annual capacity for ethylene, which is a key plastics feedstock. This week’s video wraps up with news that materials firm Kraiburg TPE plans to double the size of its thermoplastic elastomer plant in Malaysia. The expansion will add about eight million pounds of annual capacity and will allow Kraiburg to meet rising demand from China and India.

Material Insights: April 16, 2012
A potential shortage of nylon 12 resin is featured in this week's Material Insights video. The shortage is being caused by a fatal fire and explosion at a nylon 12 feedstock plant operated by Evonik Industries in Marl, Germany. The accident left two workers dead. The feedstock loss could affect not only Evonik but fellow nylon 12 makers Arkema, Ube and Ems- Grivory Four automotive suppliers - including TI Automotive - will meet April 17 to figure out how to handle the situation. Two recent acquisitions also are covered in this week's video. American plastics and chemicals firm Cytec Industries has paid $439 million in cash for Umeco, a British maker of composite materials for the aerospace and industrial markets. Also in the U.S., Bayer MaterialScience has paid an undisclosed price for the Tuffak-brand U.S. polycarbonate sheet assets of Arkema. The deal includes production equipment in Connecticut that will be moved to a Bayer site in Ohio or Massachusetts. The video wraps up with news that BASF will spend $194 million to build a plant making polyurethane and related products in Dahej, India. The plant is exected top open in 2014 and will supply local markets for appliance, auto and other end uses.

Labtech's world's smallest fully functional film blowing line
Labtech Engineering's President Peter Jurgensen talks about development process of the world's smallest fully functional film blowing line

Material Insights: April 9, 2012
Materials firms, out in force at NPE2012, are featured in this week's report from Orlando, Fla. Also this week, we report on Braskem efforts to build a second Brazilian Green PE plant, and Asahi Kasei's licensing agreement to make and distribute Thermylene in Germany.

Asahi Kasei on its Thermylene brand and last year's success
Asahi Kasei's Ramesh Iyer and John Moyer talk about benefits of producing its Thermylene brand in Germany and company's last year success resepectively.

Attendees share their opinions on NPE's move to Orlando
NPE 2012 attendees share their opinions about Orlando as a venue for the show.

SPI design competition highlights
Michael Paloian of IDS and Augie Picozza of Jarden discuss some of the entries in this year's design competition, including Mobi LLC's Mobilegs crutch and Knoll's ReGeneration chair.

Sabic's Keith Smith on the future of the composites
Sabic IP's new executive VP Keith Smith explains why he thinks the composites' time has come.

A. Schulman's officials discuss their company's projects
CEO Joe Gingo and other A. Schulman officials discuss metal replacement materials, surface solutions for rigid applications in flexible packaging and the reasons the firm is back at NPE.