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Materials

A New Engineering Plastic From China

Dalian-based supplier of custom intermediates prepares to launch its own products

by Jean-François Tremblay
August 2, 2010 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 88, Issue 31

LIGHT AND STRONG
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Credit: iStock
New Chemphy’s engineering plastic could be used to make jet engine blades, the firm claims.
Credit: iStock
New Chemphy’s engineering plastic could be used to make jet engine blades, the firm claims.

New Chemphy, a young and relatively unknown midsized company based in Dalian, in northeast China, is planning to launch a new class of high-end engineering plastics.

It’s an unusual move for a firm that until now has focused mostly on supplying custom-made intermediate chemicals to international customers. In fact, if New Chemphy is successful, it will mark the first time a Chinese company has bought a new engineering polymer to the international market.

The firm’s executives exude confidence despite the long odds. “I don’t see how our market launch could fail,” says Chu Dong, New Chemphy’s general manager. “We will sell at a lower price a product with a much higher performance than its closest competitor.”

That closest competing product, Chu says, is the engineering polymer poly(aryl ether ketone), sold by the British company Victrex as PEEK. Whereas PEEK sells for roughly $110 per kg, New Chemphy will sell its new polymer for $60 per kg. And whereas PEEK can withstand temperatures of up to 150 °C, Chu says his company’s engineering polymers, sold under the brand name ChemphySteel, perform at temperatures of up to 250 °C.

The ChemphySteel line consists of three materials: poly(phthalazinone ether ketone), poly(phthalazinone ether sulfone), and poly(phthalazinone ether sulfone ketone). New Chemphy acquired the technology from an academic at Dalian Institute of Technology who had researched the materials for 15 years, Chu says. The firm will launch ChemphySteel later this year after it completes construction of a plant with a capacity of 300 metric tons per year. The company has already produced the materials in a pilot plant.

The high-end segment of the international engineering plastic market in which ChemphySteel will compete is currently worth about $200 million annually, Chu estimates. But he expects that the market will grow in size because manufacturers that until now had been scared away by high prices will adopt moderately priced ChemphySteel.

In addition to being heat-resistant, ChemphySteel is light and robust. Chu says it could be used to make jet engine fan blades, critical car engine parts, and the clear substrate of liquid-crystal displays. LCD manufacturers have long searched for a new material that would be lighter and easier to handle than glass.

Launching a new class of high-end engineering plastics is easier said than done, cautions John Marcantonio, director of the chemicals practice at IAL Consultants, in London. In his 30 years of studying the engineering plastics market, Marcantonio says, he has seen several Chinese companies aspire to become players only to be defeated by the difficulty of the challenge.

For one, building a plant to make these “super engineering plastics” is expensive. “I know you can build cheaper in China, but there are limits to how far you can reduce costs,” Marcantonio says. The 300-metric-ton facility that New Chemphy is planning would be quite large for this industry, he says, and could easily require $100 million to build. Synthesizing the plastic would also prove difficult because many of the materials involved require complex handling procedures.

And if New Chemphy manages to build the plant and produce the polymer smoothly, it will need to find customers. A company such as Victrex, Marcantonio says, does not just sell plastic, “it designs solutions to particular problems” by working closely with customers.

One potential customer, he notes, is China’s military, owing to restrictions the country faces in importing materials that can be used in weapons parts. High-end engineering plastics are often used in applications such as missile cones, he says.

For Victrex, New Chemphy’s polymers cannot be considered competitors because they are amorphous, whereas PEEK is semicrystalline, says Victrex sales director Andrew Storm. Amorphous engineering polymers include polysulfones and polyetherimides, he explains.

With sales of $44 million in 2009, New Chemphy to date has produced mostly custom chemical intermediates for major pharmaceutical and agrochemical producers such as Pfizer, Eli Lilly & Co., and Boehringer Ingelheim. The company, which has been under the same management team since 2003 (C&EN, Sept. 1, 2008, page 35), has an R&D staff of 125 people, Chu says, including 25 Ph.D.s, to develop these intermediates and scale up manufacturing.

“Our R&D is world-class, and so we’re able to discover new products,” Chu says. In addition to ChemphySteel, New Chem­phy has developed a packaging additive that can prevent mold and bacteria from damaging food. The new product is particularly suited to the preservation of flour, baked goods, and fresh produce, Chu says.

The fact that New Chemphy is launching its own products does not mean it will neglect its customers in the pharmaceutical business, Chu insists. In the Zhuanghe district of Dalian, the company is building a new production base with a manufacturing area of 500,000 m2.

It’s perhaps just as well that New Chemphy isn’t banking on immediate success in plastics, because successfully launching a new engineering plastic is notoriously difficult. It took 30 years for the Japanese firm Kureha to turn a profit on the engineering polymer polyphenylene sulfide. Then again, “cheaper and better” is a simple formula with a strong appeal.

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