Building/construction

DuPont has started ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) production at its Chinese joint venture Beijing Hua Mei Polymer Company Limited, with plans to market the EVA produced there under the Elvax brand. DuPont says the joint venture will supply a broad range of specialty EVAs targeting market segments like packaging, adhesives, wire and cable, footwear, renewable energy, and electronics.

Sand and extruded copolyester sheet combine for a flood wall that can go up more quickly and withstand water better than the hand-filled sand bags they're aiming to replace.

Dow Chemical Co. (Midland, MI) is launching a line of polyolefin-based encapsulant films for photovoltaic (PV) modules, after adding a new production line at its Findlay, OH manufacturing plant for the new product in response to growing demand for PV specialty films.

Verification of recycled content is important to today's consumers, particularly with all the unsubstantiated claims with regard to recycled content. One company just announced that it's the first wood-alternative decking manufacturer to receive verification of recycled content.

Additives supplier Baerlocher (Münich, Germany) will increase capacity for the production of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) heat stabilizers at its plant in Dewas, India, doubling output of its one-pack stabilizers by adding 7000 tonnes/yr of capacity. The expansion, which will cost nearly €1 million, will be completed in two stages with work initiating in December of this year.

Keller Plastics, the extrusion processing business unit of Keller Products Inc., has expanded its range of products with the addition of polylactic acid (PLA) extruded profiles that offer flame resistance. Potential uses could be in point-of-purchase displays, packaging, wall partitions and other construction applications, furniture, and more.

Plastics processing equipment supplier KraussMaffei hosted approximately 130 customers at its Shanghai location for its first Tech Day event at the site. Taking place April 28-29 at Krauss-Maffei Plastics Machinery Co. Ltd in the Pudong area of Shanghai, the event focused on new plastics processing developments, with a particular emphasis on the automotive and construction industries.

A new system for corrugated plastic drainage pipes is said to offer throughput of up to twice as much as conventional systems. PVC, PE, and PP all can be processed on the new systems.

Shown is a mold block with the typical tunnel profile and a tunnel-shaped drainage pipe.

Only six months removed from the merger that created it, extrusion equipment supplier battenfeld-cincinnati (Bad Oeynhausen, Germany) is promising advances from all three of its divisions at the K (Oct. 27-Nov. 3; Düsseldorf, Germany).

Superior creep resistance at room temperature and comparable creep resistance at elevated temperatures when compared to long-glass-filled PP. That's the claim for a new polypropylene grade that gets its reinforcement from short glass fibers.