CHICAGO (June 21, 1 p.m. EDT) — BFGoodrich Performance Materials (Booth S3142) has entered a joint venture with Advanced Polymer Technologies LLC to produce and market specialty plastics, catalysts, monomers and manufactured parts.
The 50-50 venture will be named APT LLC and will be based in Huntsville, Texas. Production will be handled at three Performance Materials sites: a polymer plant in West Helena, Ark.; a monomer plant in Calvert City, Ky.; and a finished components site in Elyria, Ohio. Research and development efforts will be based in Huntsville.
The venture will cover BFG's Telene-brand dicyclopentadiene polymers, which are used in large, impact-resistant parts in which appearance is important for large trucks, agricultural applications and other heavy equipment.
Performance Materials plastics business director Dennis Gunson declined to release a first-year sales estimates for the new venture, but said it would cover marketing, production, licensing and catalyst technology.
Performance Materials, a Brecksville, Ohio-based unit of BFGoodrich Co. of Charlotte, N.C., also opened a 40,000-square-foot plant for its Stat-Rite compounds and sheet products in Seremban, Malaysia, on June 1, ahead of schedule.
The plant opened with 6 million pounds of compounding capacity and 4.5 million pounds of sheet capacity. It is roughly the size of a similar plant the firm operates in Twinsburg, Ohio.
Tim Fahey, Performance Materials global business manager, said the Malaysian site was chosen because of the concentration of electronics packaging makers in the Asia-Pacific region.
Stat-Rite products are static-dissipative compounds that can be based on polypropylene, polystyrene, PET or BFG's own line of thermoplastic polyurethanes.
Officials said business at the Performance Materials unit has been unaffected by the company's April announcement that it wants to sell the unit to focus on aerospace and engineered industrial products.
"It's business as usual," said Performance Materials senior business development manager Gilbert Martello. "You can't develop product overnight in this business, so you always have to look ahead. That's exactly what we're doing."
