Two firms recently announced polypropylene compounds businesses aimed largely at automotive. First, ExxonMobil Performance Polyolefins is a new business unit of ExxonMobil Chemical Co., Houston. It will develop new custom specialty compounds and reinforced composites from engineered polyolefins, utilizing ExxonMobil’s slate of PP, PE, TPO, and elastomer materials.
Also new is Sumika Polymer Compounds America Inc., a manufacturing and marketing operation for automotive PP compounds from Sumitomo Chemical of Japan. Sumitomo already has a PP joint venture with Chevron Phillips Chemical Co.— Phillips Sumika Polypropylene Co. in Houston. Its new operation in Griffin, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, is a joint venture with Toyo Ink International. It will build a 90,000-sq-ft PP compounding plant with capacity for 52 million lb/yr, due to open in early 2009.
You would think we’d know all there is to know about a material that was commercialized 80 years ago. Not so for polyethylene. Let’s start by brushing up on the basics.
