Material Insights: May 21, 2011

A compounder's plan to restore a 105-year-old mill building is featured in this week's Material Insights video. Plastics Group of America has acquired the 240,000 square-foot building in Woonsocket, R.I. The firm now plans to spend more than $1 million to renovate the site, which had been vacant for several years and hadn't been used for manufacturing in about 20 years. Plastics Group plans to be using part of the site by the end of the year, while maintaining its existing 65,000 square foot production plant about a mile away. Acquisitions and expansions from Mitsui Chemicals and its Prime Polymer joint venture also are featured in this week's video. Prime Polymer - owned by Mitsui and Idemitsu Kosan - is buying Brazilian polypropylene compounder Produmaster, as well as adding capacity at compounding plants in Ohio, Mexico and China. Those moves will add a total of 135 million pounds of PP compounding capacity. The video wraps up with news that engineering resins compounder RTP will almost double the size of the compounding plant it opened just last year in Ladenburg, Germany. The expanded plant will cover 105,000 square feet. The project will include the transfer of manufacturing equipment that Winona, Minn.-based RTP acquired earlier this year from Clariant International.