The Place For Plastics

Bertrand Piccard managed to bring down the house at the recent K 2010 International Trade Fair for Plastics & Rubber in Düsseldorf, Germany. He’s a Swiss psychiatrist, balloon pilot, and flamboyant promoter of Solar Impulse, a completely solar-powered airplane that this summer made a 26-hour flight and is now being prepared for intercontinental voyages.

At the booth of Solvay, a major Solar Impulse partner, Piccard donned a flight jacket before a standing-room-only crowd and extolled how the airplane—which has the wingspan of an Airbus and the weight of a car and needs less power to fly than a scooter does to operate—would not have been possible without lightweight polymers. “Maybe the people who make plastics don’t appreciate the role they are playing in the evolution of this planet,” he said, closing the press conference. Journalists rushed the podium to get pictures.

Drawing attention at K 2010 wasn’t easy. The fair, held from Oct. 27 to Nov. 3, was massive—considerably larger than any plastics show and larger, perhaps, than any other event related to chemistry. Some 3,102 exhibitors occupied all 19 halls at Düsseldorf’s enormous convention center, Messe. A brisk walk from one end of the fairgrounds to the other takes no less than 20 minutes. Materials companies, such as polymer and additive producers, dominated three or four of the halls.

Most of the space was dedicated to machinery manufacturers, who spend several weeks before the show setting up working production equipment, including film-blowing lines that are four stories tall, right on the show floor.

K 2010 drew 220,000 visitors, down somewhat from 240,000 at the last fair in 2007 but exceeding organizers’ expectations of 200,000 attendees.

Piccard captured the moment. Despite the recent recession, exhibitors were upbeat, reflecting a plastics industry with renewed confidence in what it can accomplish. Innovation and sustainability were the words used most often at the show, usually together. “Today, for us, the message is, first, innovation,” said Jacques van Rijckevorsel, general manager for plastics at Solvay. “What many people thought was impossible has become a reality.” He pointed out that 6,000 of Solar Impulse’s parts incorporate Solvay materials.

Patrick W. Thomas, chief executive officer of Bayer MaterialScience, another partner in the Solar Impulse project, wasn’t to be outdone. He noted how his company’s materials are being used in the cockpit and in other parts of the plane. “Sometimes, it means a competitive challenge about who can make the lightest wingtip,” he said.

Many polymer companies promoted developments along these lines. Rhodia unveiled a nylon-based thermoplastic composite that it claims will ease the incorporation of composites into automobiles. DuPont released new grades of nylon meant to increase the life span of plastic parts under the hood. “We believe there has never been a better time for high-performance plastics,” DuPont’s regional director of performance polymers, Björn Hedlund, said in a presentation at DuPont’s booth.

In addition to making conveyances lighter through plastics, plenty of companies that exhibited at K 2010 are trying to do their part to help save the planet by making plastics out of plants.

Brazilian chemical maker Braskem unveiled the next stage of its initiative to make polyolefins from Brazil’s cheap ethanol supply. In September, Braskem started up 200,000 metric tons per year of “green” polyethylene production, based on ethylene made via the dehydration of ethanol. At K 2010, the company announced plans for a new facility to convert ethanol into 30,000 metric tons per year of propylene, which will then be used to make polypropylene.

Although Braskem is collaborating with Novozymes to make propylene out of biomass, Rui Chammas, Braskem’s executive vice president for polymers, said it won’t use that joint technology for this facility, which is expected to open in 2013. He wouldn’t say much more about the technology except that the propylene will be derived from ethanol that is not directly from biomass.

The facility will come with a hefty price tag, about $100 million. On the basis of capacity, that’s far in excess of the $250 million its ethylene plant cost. When asked at the press conference how cost-competitive the new material will be with petroleum-based polypropylene, Chammas replied that the “market concepts were completely different.”

In other words, customers are willing to pay more for some biobased materials. He added that 70% of Braskem’s biobased polyethylene production is already under contract to large multinational firms such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and Tetra Pak. “It brings a different value,” Chammas said. “It’s not in competition with traditional polymers.”

Braskem isn’t alone in planning the production of polyolefins from Brazilian ethanol. At K 2010, Mauro Gregorio, commercial vice president of basic plastics for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa at Dow, said, “We continue to invest in polyethylene from sugarcane.”

This was something of a revelation. In 2007, Dow teamed up with Brazilian sugarcane processor Crystalsev to build a 350,000-metric-ton sugar-based polyethylene plant in Brazil by the end of 2011. By 2009, however, Crystalsev had pulled out, and the project seemed dead. At K 2010, Gregorio told C&EN that Dow is in final stages of discussions with a new partner.

Other companies also introduced biobased polymers at the show. DSM unveiled Arnitel Eco, a polyester block copolymer in which blocks of hard polybutylene ter­eph­thalate alternate with blocks of a softer elastomeric material derived from rapeseed oil.

Arnitel Eco can have between 20 and 50% biobased content depending on the size of the soft block. And the more elastomeric the polymer is made to be, the more biobased content it contains. The company is targeting durable goods, cars, and sporting goods with the product line.

In addition to unveiling new materials, plenty of firms used K 2010 to introduce themselves. The CEOs of Canada’s Nova Chemicals, Abu Dhabi’s Borouge, and Austria’s Borealis held a joint press conference. All three companies have Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Co. as a common investor. IPIC owns Nova and controls Borealis, which, in turn, owns half of Borouge.

“Think of us as a Japanese or Korean group that is managed by common shareholders and cross-board seats,” Borealis CEO Mark Garrett said. The companies cooperate better with each other than do the regional units of two of his former employers, Ciba and DuPont, Garrett contended.

Styron, the styrenics and polycarbonate business that Dow sold to Bain Capital in June, likewise used K 2010 for corporate branding. It was also the only plastics company to announce an acquisition at the show: the purchase of Dow’s 50% interest in the Japanese polycarbonate joint venture Sumitomo Dow.

The purchase is a coup for Styron. Dow also ran a larger polycarbonate joint venture in South Korea, but its partner, LG, took advantage of an option to buy out Dow, depriving Styron of an opportunity for an Asian foothold. “It was very important for us to secure that business,” Styron CEO Christopher D. Pappas, former head of Nova Chemicals, acknowledged about the Japanese purchase.

Companies from oil-rich countries, heirs apparent to the plastics industry, had a strong presence at the show. An affiliate of Iran’s National Petrochemical Co. had a pavilion right next door to Saudi Basic Industries’ booth.

Russia’s Sibur was only a couple of doors down. The company is expanding its output of polystyrene, polypropylene, and polyvinyl chloride—all in Russia. And the firm issued an announcement that it is targeting exports to Europe and China.

Sibur President Dmitry Konov isn’t quite as charming as Piccard, the Solar Impulse promoter, just yet. “The picture with Europe is quite an interesting one,” he announced at the meeting. “The relative competitiveness of the European petrochemical companies in comparison with Russian ones is beginning to look rather poor.”