Nissei moving office to new China facility
NAGANO, JAPAN — Japanese injection press maker Nissei Plastic Industrial Co. Ltd. is establishing a sales and service office in Taicang, China, and closing its branch sales office in Shanghai, the company said Feb. 25.
Nagano-based Nissei established a factory last year in Taicang, its first outside Japan for building injection presses.
“Nissei is transferring staff and all its functions from the Shanghai branch to the new Taicang branch, as well as the technical center for customer support, training school and parts warehouse” from the Shanghai headquarters location, the company said in a news release.
The Taicang sales office started operating March 1. Taicang is about 40 miles from Shanghai.
The company said Taicang currently makes about 15 injection molding machines a month — its electric, 50-ton NEX50-5E model.
It plans to increase production to 25 machines a month by the end of the year, for a pace of 300 machines a year, and then double that to 600 machines annually in 2011, while expanding the range, possibly up to 180-ton presses.
Recycling center fire kills six in Shanghai
SHANGHAI — A fire at a recycling center and apparent plastic product manufacturer in Shanghai killed six workers and injured eight, according to Chinese media.
The fire at the Yuesheng recycling center started on the afternoon of Feb. 21, after an apparent explosion in a chemical container made of plastics and metal. The explosion happened during the waste-treatment process, local media reported.
Chinese state-run broadcaster CCTV reported the center also was a small manufacturer of plastic products that had “collected a large amount of flammable substances.”
Media reports said the investigation is continuing.
China has had other mass-casualty, fatal fires at plastic recycling plants in recent years.
A fire 2008 in the southern city of Shenzhen killed 15 workers. City authorities said at the time that the factory illegally built workers' living quarters above waste materials.
A fire at another plastics recycling factory in the nearby city of Dongguan killed 13 people in January 2007.
Ex-toolmaker opens mold-transfer firm
BIDDEFORD, MAINE — One-time mold maker Paul Mulville has launched a new consulting group to help original equipment manufacturers coordinate the transfer of business and tools and launch production at new facilities.
Tooling Transfers, based in Biddeford, will serve as a neutral third party to help OEMs move their molds to other companies as well as validate and qualify those molds on new presses, Mulville said.
The transfers are typically needed if an existing molder shuts down unexpectedly, and usually involve complete packages of eight to 10 separate tools.
LyondellBasell shuts Terni, Italy, PP plant
ROTTERDAM, NETHERLANDS — LyondellBasell Industries AF SCA will close its polypropylene plant in Terni, Italy, eliminating about 120 jobs.
The timing of the closing of the plant — which has annual capacity of about 560 million pounds — is dependent on discussions with trade unions, officials said.
“Demand for polypropylene continues to be affected by global economic conditions, and the resulting market environment has made facilities such as Terni no longer economically viable,” Senior Vice President Anton De Vries said in a Feb. 25 news release.
Customers who had been supplied from Terni now will receive material from LyondellBasell's other Italian PP sites, in Ferrara and Brindisi.
Rotterdam-based LyondellBasell ranks as the world's largest maker of both PP and of polyolefins, but has been operating in bankruptcy since early 2009.
Kureha to produce PGA at W.Va. site
BELLE, W.VA. — Kureha PGA LLC will begin commercial production in October at a specialty plastic plant in Belle.
The $100 million plant will have annual capacity for almost 9 million pounds of polyglycolic acid, a high-strength polyester that can be used as a barrier resin in multilayer PET bottles.
Company officials previously have said that PGA can allow bottlers of soft drinks and beer to reduce their PET use by as much as 20 percent.
Construction at the site should wrap up in July, with 35 permanent jobs being created, according to plant manager Tom Provost.
Major markets served by the plant will include packaging and containers, he added.
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