Orlando, Fla. — Heartland Polymers will launch a new grade of random copolymer polypropylene resin for injection molding later this year.
The new grade will be available in the third quarter and can be used in storage containers and similar products, PP Sales and Marketing Director Yonas Kebede said at NPE2024 in Orlando, May 6-10. The new grade joins a PP grade for thermoforming that was commercialized earlier this year by Calgary, Alberta-based Heartland.
Heartland has made considerable progress as North America's newest PP supplier.
"We made our first pellet in June 2022 and made limited amounts of resin that year," Kebede said. "In 2023, we pushed out significant amounts of volume into the marketplace."
He added that he "was pleased" with what Heartland has been able to do as a new entrant in the market. "We were very fortunate out of the gate," Kebede said. "Our BOPP [biaxially oriented polypropylene] resin is one of the best out there, and our customers have been amazing."
Looking ahead, Kebede said that Heartland is working to further commercialize its PP resins for nonwoven applications such as diaper film. "Those resins are available, but it takes time to get qualified in those applications," he added.
Heartland's unit making propylene monomer at a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plant in Strathcona County, Alberta, went offline for a few months starting in March because of a mechanical issue. That unit had launched in late 2022, providing on-site feedstock for North America's only integrated, single-site commercial polypropylene production.
Officials previously said that Heartland is unique to the industry, producing both polymer-grade propylene (PGP) feedstock and PP product at a single site. Heartland's PP plant — with annual production capacity of almost 1.2 billion pounds — and its cogeneration unit were commissioned earlier in 2022.
Heartland's PP unit consumes 65 percent less greenhouse gases than similar global PP plants and 35 percent less than PP plants in North America. Using air cooling instead of water cooling also reduces the amount of water used at the Heartland site.
Officials previously said that the site's rail connections to major North American shipping hubs, storage-in-transit to expedite delivery times, real-time GPS shipment tracking and geographic location mean that the site is less vulnerable to extreme weather incidents that can cause downtime.