Extrusion Group™, LLC

By Mike Verespej | PLASTICS NEWS STAFF

STAMFORD, CONN. (MAy 24, 12:05 p.m. ET) — Nestlé Waters North America Inc. plans to build a $30 million bottle-to-bottle PET recycling plant that will produce 40 million pounds of recycled PET annually.

“I’m hoping that within a year that we’ve got a plant built,” said Kim Jeffery, CEO and president of the Stamford water-bottle firm. “I want to be up and running a year from now.”

Jeffery said the company isn’t prepared to make an official announcement yet; Nestlé and its planned joint venture partner are reviewing details, and both firms must approved the agreement. But he said the plant will “probably be located in the East Coast” and he hopes an announcement will come “relatively soon.”

Once built and operating at full capacity, the plant would supply about 10 percent of the Nestlé’s current total PET resin needs — about 440 million pounds a year. (more…)

Reifenhäuser Reicofil and The Nonwovens Institute (NWI) at North Carolina State University have partnered to install a one-meter-wide Reicofil meltblown line at the institute.NWI sees this expansion as an essential step in the continual investment in state-of-the-art fiber and nonwoven technologies.The new pilot line, scheduled for completion in October and for booking trials in January, will enhance NWI’s ability to continue its mission as a leader in education, research and product development for the nonwovens and affiliated industries.

The German machinery manufacturer Reifenhäuser Reicofil, a subsidiary of the Reifenhäuser Group, is the worldwide leading supplier of nonwoven, meltblown and composite lines. The Reicofil technology enables customers to produce superior quality nonwoven fabrics for a broad range of applications in hygiene, medicine, filtration and industry.

The Nonwovens Institute is the world’s first accredited academic program for the interdisciplinary study of engineered fabrics through an innovative partnership of industry, government and academe. NWI combines the expertise of NC State’s leading colleges of Textiles, Engineering, and Natural Resources with the research and development capabilities of its more than 60 member companies.

Source: Nonwovens Industry

Kimberly-Clark Health Care announces that it has been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market its MicroCool* Breathable High Performance Surgical Gown as meeting the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) Level 4 Standard for liquid barrier protection. The AAMI Standard is a system of liquid barrier performance classification for protective apparel. The gown, featuring the updated labeling, is expected to be available in select locations beginning this month and to the complete market by the end of this year. (more…)

By Angie DeRosa | PLASTICS NEWS STAFF

Jason Foster, founder of Replenish Bottling Co. Inc., with his firm’s product. (Plastics News photo by Angie DeRosa)

AUSTIN, TEXAS (May 13, 4:35 p.m. ET)  — Design empowerment took center stage at the 2011 Industrial Designers of America Southern District Conference, held April 15-17 in Austin.

The message throughout the conference was about equipping designers and manufacturers with information and resources to move forward in an increasingly demanding world.

And, of course, the focus now is always on sustainable design solutions.

For designers, the challenge is to figure out where design is going. With substantial population growth and increasing middle classes, countries like China and India will have purchasing power. The populations also will have greater access to education. In 2000, China had three design schools. In 2011, it has 1,000. (more…)

By Rhoda Miel | PLASTICS NEWS STAFF

DETROIT (May 13, 2:10 p.m. ET) — General Motors Co. is taking advantage of its in-house plastics operations in Spring Hill, Tenn., tapping into its capacity to make parts for the next generation of the Chevrolet Corvette and two other car models.

GM originally built the plastics operations in Spring Hill to injection mold and paint doors for its Saturn brand, but has continued to find use for the facility since halting Saturn production in 2007.

The unit turned out more than 940,000 parts for the Chevrolet Traverse crossover vehicle in 2010 and nearly 42,000 service parts for Saturn vehicles that remain on the road.

In early May, the company told workers it will add 13 jobs to the plastics unit as it adds work molding parts such as bumper fascia for the next generation Corvette, which is assembled at Bowling Green, Ky. It will add another nine jobs later to make parts for the Traverse and its sister vehicle, the GMC Acadia, when it gets a freshened exterior, a GM spokeswoman said.

Source: Plastics News

A European research team has developed textiles which will kill the MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) superbug.

The BioElectricSurface research team, led from the Materials and Surface Science Institute (MSSI) at the University of Limerick, has used nanomaterials on textiles used in hospital drapes, bed linens and upholstery.

The MRSA bug is one of the major causes of hospital-acquired infections. In June 2007, the European Centre for Disease Prevention (ECDC) identified anti-biotic resistant micro-organisms as the most important infectious disease threat in Europe. One in ten patients entering a European hospital can expect to catch an infection caused by drug-resistant microbes and each year, around three million people in the EU catch a healthcare-associated infection, resulting in approximately 50,000 deaths. (more…)

Total European nonwovens production grew in weight by 10.3% since 2009, reaching 1.78 million tons in 2010, according to EDANA statistics. This compares with a 6.3% decline in 2009. The level of production in square meters, which did not stop growing, reached 54,245 million in 2010, representing a total turnover estimated around €5,585 million.

Launching the EDANA Annual Statistics 2010, Jacques Prigneaux, EDANA’s market analysis andeconomic affairs director said that “The European nonwoven industry is back on the right trackin 2010. Two main findings of EDANA Annual Statistics illustrate the vitality of our sector. Firstly,several market segments recorded their best output ever, in both tonnage and square meters.
Secondly, EU trade flows of nonwovens with the rest of the world, both exports and imports, havenever been as high as the ones recorded last year.”

Despite the recovery of almost all other market segments, the hygiene business is still by far thelargest outlet of the industry both in terms of weight and surface area for 2010. After the first everdecline in tonnage in 2009, the amount of nonwovens sold to the personal care wipes marketrecorded double digit growth last year, both in tons and square meters. Other importantpositive evolutions, in percentage, were observed in automotive, building/roofing, air and gasfiltration, agriculture and medical applications.

Detailed data for the “2010 European Nonwovens Production and Deliveries” is available toEDANA member companies.

Source: Nonwovens Industry

In line with the Chinese government’s Twelfth Five Year Plan, which is encouraging the green economy and will enable new recycled materials to become a key industry, Hong Kong-headquartered Costin New Materials is to vastly increase its capacity for both recycled fibres and nonwovens, and is also exploring new applications in composites.
Costin has already completed its expansion project for its recycled chemical fibre production lines, with annual production capacity increased by 40% from 30,000 tons to 42,000 tons.
When new nonwoven materials and thermal resistant filtration production lines commence commercial production by the end of May and June of this year respectively, the total annual production capacity of the group’s nonwovens production lines will be increased by approximately 23% to approximately 137 million metres.

Source: EcoComposites