Ashland Inc. will begin using organic feedstocks provided by DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products in some of its Envirez-brand renewable-resource resins.
Dublin, Ohio-based Ashland will use Susterra-brand propanediol, which is 100 percent renewably sourced from corn sugar. Envirez resins are used to make molded parts for the agricultural, marine and transportation markets. The product is marketed by Ashland's Composite Polymers business group.
DuPont Tate & Lyle makes Susterra and other bio-PDO products at a plant in Loudon, Tenn. The firm is a 50-50 joint venture between plastics and chemical maker DuPont Co. of Wilmington, Del., and Tate & Lyle LLC, a producer of sugar, starches and other renewable products based in London.
``As demand for green products has increased, so has demand for Envirez resin,'' said Jud Smith, Ashland Composite Polymers general manager, in a news release. ``By incorporating Susterra, we are now able to expand the range of applications ... and offer a sustainable material option to a larger portion of our customer base.''
Adding Susterra will allow Envirez to move into open molding and infusion molding processes for parts such as boat hulls, Ashland spokesman Ken Gordon said. The addition also will allow Ashland to target Envirez at the building and construction market.
To date, Envirez has been used in sheet molding compound applications. Envirez resins ``provide composite fabricators with the first step to sustainable composites,'' Ashland officials said in the release.
Ashland developed Envirez in the late 1990s as part of a research project with agricultural equipment maker Deere & Co. and the United Soybean Board trade group.
Envirez is not biodegradable, but has renewable content of 12-25 percent, even before the inclusion of Susterra, officials said.