Düsseldorf, Germany — Plastics additives company Baerlocher GmbH is pushing into the recycling market with its resin stabilization technology, but realizes it's going to have to do some educating along the way to gain market share.
The Munich-based company said during K 2016 in Düsseldorf that its Baeropol RST brand is an off-shoot of work the company was doing with major resin makers when employees realized the stabilizer also had applications downstream in the recycling market as well.
Baerlocher views its RST as a substitute for a long-standing additive that has been the go-to for recycled resins for the last generation, according to the company
“So the RST technology can be substituted for phosphites in a typical antioxidant package. And one of the reasons that we've taken it into the recycling industry is it also has good antacid properties,” said Gregory Andersen, business manager for Baerlocher in the United States.
“There's very few recycle streams that are 100 percent pure any one polymer. We have done quite a bit of field work,” Anderson said, adding that cross-contamination leads to problems.
“One of the difficulties that reprocessors face is the acidic nature that PVC contamination lends to a recycling stream,” he said. “Because RST technology has antacid properties as well as antioxidant properties, it's very well suited in a recycling stream. “Rather than adding separate antacids in the recycling stream, you can just use RST as a replacement.”
The company's RST approach saves customers about 25 percent when compared to phosphites, but the company touts attributes beyond just that, including soluability, color and melt stabilization before it even brings up pricing.
Arne Schulle is CEO of the Baerlocher Group and says the technology launch into the new business space is based on his company's experience in oleochemistry.
“New customers are evaluating these exciting new products every day, and their feedback has been very positive,” he said in a statement.
Schulle, in an interview on the K show floor, also provided an update about the company's continuing growth, including an expansion of operations in Turkey to serve the Middle East and Africa.
“We continue to invest in Turkey. So after an initial investment in Turkey and we will further invest into a logistics center,” he said. “This investment is more related to logistics around it, so it's not in regards to capacity.”
The project includes additional warehouse space.