Rotterdam, the Netherlands-based Parx Plastics BV has signed a letter of intent to set up a new joint venture and a production facility in China for its biocompatible antimicrobial plastics production technology.
The company announced Oct. 31 that the new facility would be built in Sino-Italy Ecological Park, located in the Yangtze River Delta near Ningbo.
According to Parx, as part of investment, Ningbo Parx New Materials Co. Ltd. joint venture has been set up and a cooperation agreement has been signed with Sino-Italy Tus Investment (Zhejiang) Co.Ltd.
The Sino-Italy Ecological Park is a joint initiative of the Chinese and Italian governments to create a pilot city developing resource saving, environmentally friendly, ecological innovations.
The 40-square-kilomter zone will house companies in the field of new materials, plastics, automotive, aerospace and clean energy.
Parx Plastics has a patented technology to create antimicrobial thermoplastics. By applying biomimetics and nanotechnology, the company developed a method to make an intrinsic change to plastic, resulting in a mechanical/physical property that acts against bacteria and micro-organisms.
No chemicals, biocides, heavy metals or nano-particles are used.
Instead, the technology makes use of zinc salts, which are incorporated during polymerization into the polymeric structure of the thermoplastic, thus eliminating the risk of migration. As one of the body's most abundant trace elements, zinc is completely biocompatible.
In 2014, Parx Plastics launched its first ready-to-use Saniconcentrates for manufacturers in Europe and the U.S. to safely create self-sanitising products with an antibacterial property of up to 99 percent within 24 hours.