Strictly-Extrusion

German diversified industrial and trading group L. Possehl & Co has acquired rubber machinery firm ThyssenKrupp Elastomertechnik.
Elastomertechnik makes and installs equipment for rubber manufacturing including tyre-makers, mixers, extruders and driers. It has around 1,050 employees with manufacturing facilities at Hamburg-Harburg and Freudenberg in German, Belisæe in Croatia, and Topeka in US. Its sales last year reach E150m.
Chairman of Possehl’s executive board Uwe Lüders said: “Elastomertechnik will form an independent division within the Possehl group. The company will be able to further consolidate its market position, while still maintaining its own identity.”
ThyssenKrupp said the sale was part of its strategy of “active portfolio optimisation”. The purchase price was not disclosed.

The agreement between the Austrian Knill Gruppe and Nokia Corporation concerning the sale of all the shares of Nextrom Holding S.A. held by Nokia was closed on 16 March 2005. According to the contract, the Knill Gruppe purchased all the registered shares (1’875′000) and all the bearer shares (1’361′702) held by Nokia in Nextrom Holding S.A., as well as the remaining senior loan from Nokia to Nextrom, for a total price of CHF 7.95 million. This transaction being closed, Nokia has no Nextrom shares left, nor any other outstanding loans to Nextrom.

As part of the transaction, approx. CHF 18.5 million of the CHF 20 million senior loan was repaid through the sale of two long term financial assets. The subordinated loan of CHF 66 million from Nokia to Nextrom was waived.

As a consequence of the transaction, the consolidated balance sheet of Nextrom is showing only approx. CHF 1.5 million of loans and approximately CHF 14 million of equity, and the same amount of cash.

The Knill Gruppe has confirmed its intention to keep Nextrom Holding SA as a public company, traded at the Swiss Stock Exchange. Nextrom will keep its present business activity and remain a global partner.

The Knill Gruppe is planning to consolidate all the fiber optics related business of its Cable and Wire Division (Rosendahl) to Nextrom. This consolidation will enable Nextrom to strengthen its market position in the field of Fiber Optics and will financially enable Nextrom to continue its activities with a clearly improved and strengthened balance sheet.

New non-contact capacitive thickness measurement device specifically for barrier films. Major issue with EVOH and NYLON resins with standard capacitive technology above 50 degree C causes measurements to be inaccurate and only measures EVOH & PA layers. PLAST-CONTROL\’s new system scans across the double layflat in 20-30 seconds where the film is below 50 C. Requires oscillating haul-off for film movement. After first 6 scans (2-3 minutes) accurate profile is displayed and ready for automatic gauge control correction. There after, every scan displays new profile information. Max. layflat for C-scan is 2.2 meter. Wider O-scan frames in development. Contact Mark Anderson at 978 462-0306 for more information.

At the annual Member meeting on February 22nd 2005, the PE100+ Association elected Robin Bresser,
Borealis Pipe Marketing Manager, as its new President. André Scheelen from BP, the previous President,
decided not to stay in the Board of the Association but will keep an active role in the Member meeting. The
member companies appreciated Andre Scheelen for his great contribution and leadership in the development of the Association since its foundation in 1999. The newly elected Board members are as follows:
President and Chairman: Robin Bresser, Borealis
Vice President: Ulrich Schulte, Basell Polyolefins
Secretary: Serge Bettonville, BP HDPE
Treasurer: Aloys Hutten, SABIC EuroPetrochemicals
Advisory Committee: Christine Bertrand, TOTAL Petrochemicals
Asia & MEA member: Shinichi Nagano, Mitsui Chemicals Polyethylene
Furthermore, Nora Mäkelä-Vaarne from Borealis, took over from Jenny Wang as the Marketing Manager of the Association. The member companies also thanked Jenny Wang for her excellent work in the PE100+
Association’s industry recognised promotion work.
The Association warmly welcomed Mitsui Chemicals, who joined the Association in November 2004, at the
member meeting. ‘We think it a great honor to be the first non-European member that has joined the PE100+ Association. We look forward to promoting respectable PE100 products under the statutes of the Association.’ said Mr. Shinichi Nagano, Manager of Mitsui Chemicals Polyethylene Division.
The pipe management of the six member companies also highly praised the achievements and image the
Association has reached in the past years and stated that the Association continues to invite any parties whose products can meet the PE100+ requirements. “The PE100+ Association has indeed set a benchmark for the pipe industry on providing PE pipe products with consistently high quality.” said by Dieter Bilda, Business Manager of SABIC. The statutes of the Association require a yearly election of the board members, who are representatives of the member companies.

Austrian companies Cincinnati Extrusion and Gruber Extrusionstechnik have developed a window profile extrusion machine concept with an output of up to 250kg per hour.
The Combiline can be custom-made to accommodate 85% of all applications, according to Cincinnati Extrusion. It says the extruder, calibration table, caterpillar haul-off, saw, and a tipping device, come with mechanics and wiring prepared for quick assembly and start-up on site.
The product is a complete extrusion line, equipped with a central control system, and offered as a single unit. In addition Gruber can supply an integrated die for the line.
Components include a microprocessor-controlled central control unit mounted on the extruder. The conical extruder has a 72mm screw, which is equipped with an AC drive, a horizontal dosing unit and the Intracool screw temperature control system.

Strong growth in North America helped pipe maker Uponor to improve profits last year.
The Finnish company reported operating profits of E97.9 million for 2004, a threefold increase on the E30.7m achieved in 2003. However, 2003 profits were affected by restructuring costs. Uponor says that the underlying profit improvement in 2004 is 22%.
Improved sales also contributed to the positive performance: they rose by 5% to reach almost E1,073m. Growth in North America was 27%, while central Europe grew by 12% and the rest of Europe by 9%.
Despite the positive result, the final quarter of last year saw a downturn: sales in central Europe were “weak” and operating profit declined by 10% compared with the same period in 2003.
The company said it expected 2005 profits and margins to improve on 2004 results.

Austrian extrusion equipment supplier Technoplast will shortly complete its largest ever single order for the delivery of 294 lines for Chinese window profile manufacturer Dalian Shide, but says the European plastics profile market now also a market with “real promise”.
Technoplast marketing and sales director Rudolf Wessely said: “The roots of profile extrusion are clearly firmly in Europe. And Technoplast is turning back to these roots. This does not mean of course, that the markets in Asia and America are not highly interesting.”
The company said there has been a turnaround in the market, with strong demand coming especially from Germany now, but also in the UK for conservatories and winter gardens, and increasing demand for window profiles in the southern Europe. Wessely said eastern Europe will have plenty of strong growth for some years.
Further growth in China will depend on the new capacity becoming fully utilised, he said, but there are now boom conditions in other Asian countries.
However, he warned that European producers are hampered in the US by both exchange rate considerations and cheap exports of profiles, tools and machines from China.

Toray Plastics has developed a co-extruded metallized OPP film that reportedly has improved sealing, barrier, and pinhole resistance over conventional OPP packaging materials. Called PCFS, the film eliminates the need for a sealant extrusion coating step. The product has an innovative heat-sealing characteristic, activated at relatively low temperature, that provides an outstanding and thorough hermetic seal. Moisture and oxygen barriers are claimed to be high, and pinhole resistance is said to be greater than on conventional metallized OPP films. The PCFS grade also has improved stiffness and dead-fold properties, which upgrade package appearance.

Klöckner Pentaplast of America Inc. has added two grades of shrink film to its Pentaprint line: high-shrink PETG film with a frosty look for full-body label applications, and L282/41 vinyl roll-on, shrink-on label film for wraparound applications. The PETG film provides a frosty appearance to glass bottles, eliminating the need for costly acid-etched containers. The film eliminates the need for a base color and complex ink lay-down techniques, thus providing additional savings. It has a 78% shrink rate and is said to be well suited to highly contoured bottles and containers. The product provides outstanding gauge control, ink adhesion, and seaming, and can be used with flexographic and gravure printing processes.
Pentaprint L282/41 roll-on film offers high visibility and excellent graphics, and can be run on existing wrap-around label machinery with minimal equipment modification. The product has a 45% shrink rate, more than twice that of most competitive, heat-stable films, and can be used with quick-setting solvent adhesives and flexographic or gravure printing. Clear versions permit reverse printing of graphics. The film reportedly has excellent gauge control, layflat properties, ink adhesion, and seaming.

An innovative industrial/agricultural film winder from Davis-Standard incorporates an automatic cross-cut knife and transfer mechanism to ensure reliable transfers to a new core and improved operator safety. Developed in 2004, the winder addresses an industry safety issue by replacing manual cut and transfer with an automatic transfer when processing heavy films or gusseted, folded films.
Most turret winders used in industrial and agricultural film applications are not equipped to mechanically cut and transfer these thicker types of films. Typically, this requires an operator to perform the task manually, often resulting in a safety hazard because of the high injury rate to upper body limbs. Davis-Standard’s winder utilizes a traversing cross-cut rotary shear that is motor driven across the film. Processors can take advantage of shafted and shaftless auto-cut with this automatic core transfer. With this mechanism, all an operator has to do is push a button.

The winder is available in widths from 40 to 200 inches (1,000 to 5,000mm) wide and is capable of cutting through eight folds of film, each 6 to 8 mil thick. The capacity to cut folded films is essential as most automatic, snap-knife cutting devices do not permit this and pneumatic driven razor knives often stall, causing processing delays. In addition, the automatic core transfer improves processing efficiency because of a short tail start on the new core and better roll geometry. Initial feedback from customers using the winder has been very positive.

For more information about Davis-Standard’s new industrial/agricultural film winder, contact Rick Keller at rkeller@davis-standard.com.