Sweet Home, Chicago

NPE 2006, the plastics trade show held in Chicago on June 19-23 by the Society of the Plastics Industry, might not have been an enormous draw for companies that make plastics in pellet form, but the plastics companies that did show up had much on their agendas.

The triennial show attracted about 64,000 attendees, a 2% increase over the 2003 event.

Machines spitting out plastic products such as magnifying glasses, toy robots, and 5-gal buckets were everywhere among the stands. Chemical and plastics suppliers were a little harder to find. And a few noteworthy plastics companies, GE Plastics and Ticona among them, did not exhibit. An often-repeated explanation for the difference is that machine makers can demonstrate and even sell their products right on the show floor. Plastics companies have much less to show potential customers.

But a few plastics companies did use the gathering to unveil new initiatives and products. Dow Chemical launched its Infuse olefin block copolymers, which are based on a new system for block copolymer formation (C&EN, June 26, page 22). In the Dow process, a "chain-shuttling agent" transfers a polymer chain back and forth from one polymerization catalyst to another.

The resulting polymer has alternating "hard" blocks similar to high-density polyethylene and "soft" blocks of an ethylene-octene copolymer. Dow says the control of molecular architecture allows for easier processing, better high-temperature performance, faster cycle times, and improved abrasion resistance versus other olefin elastomers.

According to Greg J. Jozwiak, global business director for performance elastomers and plastomers, Infuse beefs up Dow's offering to the specialty elastomers industry, a $10 billion-per-year business worldwide. "For about one-third of that, we were not able to participate with our previous product offering, and now we can participate," he said. Markets for Infuse include flexible molded goods, power-tool handles, wheels, cap liners, elastic films, gaskets, and hoses.

DuPont introduced two polymers that take advantage of the planned opening this year of a raw material plant in Loudon, Tenn. The plant, a joint venture between DuPont and Tate & Lyle, will make 100 million lb of 1,3-propanediol (PDO) annually via a novel fermentation process.

DuPont has been marketing Sorona-brand polytrimethylene terephthalate (PTT) fibers made from a petrochemical-based PDO feedstock. With large volumes of fermentation-based product coming onstream, the company says it will launch the other PDO derivatives. One is a PTT polymer that has properties like those of the engineering plastic polybutylene terephthalate. The other is a grade of DuPont's Hytrel elastomer that relies on PDO instead of 1,4-butanediol for its polyol section.

DuPont is also considering the expansion of PTT fiber capacity in both Asia and the U.S. The company currently consumes about 24 million lb of PDO annually to produce some 60 million lb of PTT fiber.

Other companies used NPE 2006 as a way to outline their strategies or show off their new identities. At a press conference, Ian Paterson, the Bayer MaterialScience management board member responsible for innovation and marketing, said his company is looking to broaden its polymer portfolio beyond polyurethanes and polycarbonate. "We are looking not only at how we can grow within our own portfolio but also how we can grow beyond that," he said.

He pointed to Lyttron, a start-up company Bayer founded with a $29 million investment. The company is developing moldable electroluminescent materials for applications such as car interior lighting.

Lanxess, the industrial chemical business spun off from Bayer last year, profiled its future as an independent company. "We want to systematically move away from those sectors that we cannot further develop on our own," said Ulrich Koemm, a member of Lanxess' board of management.

Koemm also laid out Lanxess' strategy in styrenic resins, a business that is currently under strategic review. The company is quadrupling capacity at an Indian acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene plant to 175 million lb per year. It is consolidating its styrenics businesses in Europe and the Americas into single facilities in Tarragona, Spain, and Addyston, Ohio, respectively.

Chemtura used NPE to show off its plastics additives capabilities, which resulted from its formation last year through the merger of Crompton and Great Lakes Chemical. Sean P. O'Connor, vice president of plastics additives at Chemtura, said the difference between the Great Lakes merger and the 1999 merger of Witco and Crompton & Knowles that created Crompton is "night and day."

"There was no real preparation at all for the Witco and Crompton & Knowles merger," O'Connor recalls. "On this occasion we had a lot of prework. By and by we were able to talk about what we wanted the new company to be." The deal made Chemtura the largest plastics additives maker in the world by combining Crompton products such as heat stabilizers with Great Lakes' flame retardants and antioxidants.

O'Connor also took issue with the view that chemical companies don't derive as much immediate value from NPE as machinery companies do. "We were able to make a lot of sales on the show floor," he said.