Plastic Selection Group Inc. has signed a licensing deal with PolyOne Corp. to allow PolyOne to make PSG's Kostrate-brand terpolymer at a plant in Shenzhen, China.
The deal was signed in late 2007, with production beginning shortly after, said Amanda Coulter, sales and marketing coordinator for Columbus, Ohio-based PSG. PolyOne — based in Avon Lake, Ohio — has been the exclusive North American distributor of Kostrate since 2006.
Kostrate is a clear, tough, rigid resin based on butadiene, styrene and methylmethacrylate feedstocks. The material has been competing with polycarbonate — especially since safety concerns arose regarding use of bisphenol-A feedstock in PC production, Coulter said. PSG now is doing “a lot of development work” to replace PC in sports water bottles, she added.
In this area, PSG also is competing with Tritan, a new specialty plastic recently commercialized by Eastman Chemical Co.
Other recent applications for Kostrate include point-of-purchase displays, paper and soap dispensers, housewares and office products. PSG also is developing two new grades of Kostrate for specialty blow molding applications.
The material is “filling the gap” between “brittle clears” such as acrylic, styrene acrylonitrile and general-purpose polystyrene and “engineered clears” such as polycarbonate and glycol-modified PET, PSG officials said.
Privately held PSG doesn't release sales or production data. The five-employee firm was founded in 1991 by Bill Dickinson, a chemicals industry veteran who had worked with Borg Warner Co. and Ashland Inc. Kostrate is produced on a toll basis by SDR Plastics Inc. in Ravenswood, W.Va.
Most of PSG's work had been in polymer application and development before Kostrate was first formulated in 2003. Recently, PSG worked on a number of projects with several U.S.-based customers that have molding facilities in China. Kostrate also likely will be available through PolyOne in Europe by the end of 2008.
Tel. 614-464-2008, fax 614-464-1585.
