DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY (Oct. 29, 7:45 p.m. EDT) — Radici Plastics has closed its compounding plant in Blacksburg, S.C., but will add almost 20 million pounds of capacity for nylon 6/6 resin in Novara, Italy, in 2008.
The 9-year-old Blacksburg site was closed earlier this year because of declining sales, said marketing and technical service director Giovanni Pioltini, after an Oct. 29 news conference at K 2007 in Dusseldorf. The company will continue to serve the region through direct sales of imported compounds and through distribution sales.
“We are not giving up on the North American market,” Pioltini said.
In Novara, the companywill add 18 million pounds of nylon 6/6 capacity, as well as 22 million pounds of capacity for nylon feedstock adipic acid. The firm's feedstocks plant in Zeitz, Germany, will see 22 million more pounds of adipic acid capacity this year and an additional 18 million pounds in 2008 as well.
Trials and testing also are under way for a new nylon batch production plant that would make transparent and amorphous grades of specialty nylon, as well as compounds based on nylon 6/10 and 6/12, Pioltini said. The plant will be in Novara and is expected to begin commercial production in the second half of 2008.
Parent firm RadiciGroup of Bergamo, Italy, is a conglomerate that posted sales of about 2 billion euros ($2.5 billion) in 2006. About 60 percent of that amount came from plastics and chemicals.