Industrial Integration & Development in the Modified Plastic Sector

By Duan Qingsheng, Deputy Secretary General of China Synthetic Resin Supply and Marketing Association

The “China Manufacturing 2025” strategy explicitly defines priorities for 10 key sectors, conforming to the development trend of “Internet Plus”, with the deep integration of information technology and industrialization as the main line.
1. new generation information technology,
2. high-grade numerical control tools and robotics,
3. aerospace equipment,
4. ocean engineering equipment and high-tech ships,
5. advanced railway equipment,
6. energy-saving and new-energy vehicles,
7. power equipment,
8. new materials,
9. biological medicines and high performance medical devices, and
10. agricultural machinery,
The nation will strengthen the capacity of the industrial base, improve the process level and product quality, and promote intelligent manufacturing, and green manufacturing.
The core of “China Manufacturing 2025” lies in the integration of highly systematic manufacturing industry and the “internet of things”, and its goal is to achieve high efficiency, high-volume production and distribution of personalized products.
Overcapacity has become chronic in almost all Chinese manufacturing sectors. But in the engineering plastic sector, capacity is overbuilt only for materials like POM and PBT, and that excess capacity has resulted in vicious price competition and low industrial resource efficiency.
Both the excess capacity and the vicious competition of the sector can be solved through industrial integration, both vertical and horizontal.
The vertical integration is the cooperation between upstream and downstream. Such cooperation includes raw materials, product development, design, production, sales, the host plant, end users, and even cross-industry cooperation. Many development projects that achieve great breakthroughs in efficiency are completed through cooperation up and down the industrial chain. For example, the development of the BMW i3, i5 involves a large number of carbon fiber applications. Through cooperation with Toray Industries, BMW brought the experience of Toray Industries to bear in the development and application of carbon fiber materials to avoid spending a lot of time and effort in carbon fiber R&D. In the development and application of plastic products, BASF is a powerful raw-material partner in the development of the BMW i3, providing design expertise for the development of the back of BMW i3’s front seat, the carbon fiber body, the main firmware and the shell of the rear seat. During the Japanese IPF Plastics Exhibition in 2008, Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation introduced the members of 3D non fusion weld mark alliance (including 13 companies) at its press conference. Together, these companies have raw material factories, mold factories, suppliers of plastic injection molding machines, and make mold flow analyzers, machine tools, steel and other auxiliary equipment. And they realized the segmentation and cooperation of an industrial chain. At the Dusseldorf International Plastics and Rubber Exhibition (K 2013) of Germany, the application of continuous fiber reinforced technology in the automotive industry attracted a high degree of attention, and the manufacturers of injection molding machine, molds, pressure molding machines, extruders, raw materials and testing equipment gave a lot of consideration to its impact on the market. In early 2014, DSM announced plans to join the Lightweight Integrated Process Application (LIPA) project. Through inquiry into the LIPA project, it was found that the project partners have formed a complete team (including companies engaged in molding, design, sensor detection, infrared heating, injection machines, mechanical hands, simulation testing, engineering plastics and impregnated materials) for continuous-fiber reinforced products.
At a number of exhibitions in recent years, more and more systems have been shown, and the advantages arising from the industrial chain cooperation have been more and more obvious. For example, in a seminar on “medical plastic injection systematic solutions” held by the Medical Plastic Committee of China Plastics Processing Industry Association on September 18, 2015, Arburg showcased a cyclo-olefin polymer (COP) prefilled syringe manufacturing system, including the injection molding machine 470E 1000-290 of Arburg, manipulator of Wei Li Robot, 50cc syringe mold of Fujiseiki, COP 690R raw material of ZEON and mold temperature controllers of Piovan. It can be seen that a simple systematic solution has demonstrated the high efficiency of manufacturing brought by integration across industrial chains.
Horizontal industrial integration focuses on mergers, asset restructuring and powerful alliances. For example, China General Nuclear Power Corporation has made frequent acquisitions in the modified plastics sector to create a large-scale modified plastics enterprise group. Horizontal industrial integration may ease today’s overcapacity and vicious competition.
For China’s manufacturing industries, whether they adopt “China Manufacturing 2025”, “German Industry 4.0” or “Internet Plus”, industrial integration is a much needed structural element.
Over the past two decades, China’s modified plastics sector developed rapidly. Faced with the challenges of the new economic environment, in order to transform and upgrade, modified plastics enterprises must develop toward standardized, high-end thermoplastic-composite products.
Thermoplastic composite materials market
In recent years, thermosetting composite materials have been developed rapidly. However, developers increasingly focused on staple fiber enhancements with small scale. With the increasingly challenging minimal-weight requirements of manufacturers of automobiles, aviation/spaceflight equipment, rail transport equipment and water transport equipment, the market potential of thermoplastic composite materials will be greater.
Standardization
“Big data”, “Industry 4.0”, “China Manufacturing 2025” and “Internet Plus” overlap, and all four require standardization. The difficulty in establishing a standardized system is in assuring compliance with high reliability, and this is a huge challenge for China’s manufacturing industries.
Light weight
So far, much attention has been given to reducing the weight of automobiles. In recent years, weight has gradually become a concern of China’s packaging industry.
Substitution
In addition to the tradition of using plastic instead of steel, wood and glass, using thermoplastics in place of the traditional thermosetting plastics can achieve a better design, environment-friendliness and better processing performance. New emphasis is given to using plastic in medical implants instead of the traditional lead, stainless steel and titanium alloys.
High fluidity
Low temperature processing can be realized with high-fluidity materials while improving the efficiency forming of thin-wall products. High-fluidity materials also enable energy conservation while improving molding performance. Therefore, high flow grade materials with consistent performance have gradually become a focus of market development. Of course, high mobility is desirable not only for engineering plastics, but also for general plastics and additives.
Modification and optimization of processing performance
With increased requirements to protect the environment, more and more products that incorporate environmental friendly additives are required to replace traditional products that may be more efficient but are less environment-friendly. Achieving better processing performance while modifying the material’s functionality has become the R&D focus for more and more new products in recent years. For example, in K Fair 2013, Clariant introduced a flame retardant with high temperature resistance considering the processing performance in the process of material development.
Focus on application
The specific needs of the application market should among the highest priorities in the development of materials. For example, a pesticide applied on greenhouse flowers, Beijing Tiangang Auxiliary Co., Ltd. has developed a light stabilizer with pesticide resistance, and the test results are good. To remedy the low rate of finished PP lithium battery diaphragms, Java Refinement Co., Ltd. developed a special pore forming agent, and the rate of finished products has increased significantly, while pores form evenly.
High performance recovery
As a result of mechanical and thermal processes, many traditional recycling methods diminish the material’s performance. Through the use of modified technology, high performance recycling methods can produce materials with undamaged or even improved performance. For example, DuPont? Entira? EP compatibilizer enables efficient recovery of mixed scrap. It is currently suitable for recycling PP-PE mixed waste and significantly improves the performance of scrap.
Zero defect manufacture
In recent years, a zero defect approach enabled more manufacturers to improve efficiency. In zero defect plastic processing, the focus is the tuning of material viscosity and its impact during molding and other processing. For example, the self-adaptive processing control system launched by Krauss Maffei can adjust automatically for each cycle according to the instant melt viscosity and mould resistance, so as to realize the zero defect manufacturing.
Personalization
Highly efficient high-volume production of personalized products will be the general trend of manufacturing industries. In recent years, 3D printing technology has become very attractive because it promises to realize personalized manufacturing. Of course, at present, the technology has a long way to go before achieving efficient high-volume production. However, personalized production is not only 3D printing: personalization of design, logo, color and even product strength are all potentially personal expressions and worth industry leaders’ attention.