Professor Christian Hopmann, institute director of the IKV Institute for Plastics Processing in Industry and Craft at RWTH Aachen University, has been honoured as the newest "Fellows of SPE" at Antec 2019, the largest international technology conference. He was nominated by SPE’s Injection Moulding Division (IMD) and received the prestigious award by Dr. Brian Grady, president of the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) on 17 March 2019 at Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Byk is expanding its operations in the Shanghai region and has opened a new site. The company said that Asia accounts for one third of sales, and has made a substantial contribution in past decades. The five-hectare site in Shanghai (around 54,000 sqm) is home to laboratories, a distribution center, and administration and was constructed in just two years. BYK invested around EUR 38 million. Some 100 employees will work here it is in full operation.

Continental celebrated the grand opening of its greenfield tire plant in Rayong, Thailand. Starting operations exactly on schedule, only two years after the groundbreaking ceremony, the manufacturing facility is a  EUR 250 million investment and is equipped with state-of-the-art technology to produce about four million passenger and light truck premium tires per year for Thailand and the whole APAC by 2022.

A slightly cheaper brand of motorcycle tire will soon be sold in the Philippines and it is locally manufactured, using the rubber bought from Filipino farmers. Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said that as much as 10,000 pieces of Pilipinas Agila Tires, the first locally manufactured motorcycle tire brand, will be up for sale in two weeks.

The Coating Additives Business Line of Evonik has extended its existing partnership with international specialty chemicals distributor Safic-Alcan regarding the Tego additives products. Safic-Alcan SAS and Safic-Alcan Necarbo B.V. will be provided with the complete coating additives range of Evonik allowing customers to be supplied by a single distributor in France and the BeNeLux region. In addition, the agreement also extends to Safic-Alcan UK for the distribution of the liquid additives in the UK and Ireland.

China has offered to invest in Sri Lanka’s rubber industry, Minister of Plantation Industries Navin Dissanayake told Parliament in Colombo on 3 April 2019. He said that a delegation China's largest natural rubber maker, China Hainan Rubber Industry Group, from Hainan in China met him on 3 April and discussed investing in the rubber industry.

The transition period for the Elastomer Guideline published by the Umweltbundesamt (UBA), Germany’s federal environmental agency, for assessment of elastomers in contact with drinking water, ends on 31 December 2021. Sulphur cross-linked compounds currently in use in drinking water applications can no longer be used after that time. The German rubber compounder Kraiburg based in Waldkraiburg in Bavaria has succeeded in developing compounds that can be used in elastomer solutions for drinking water applications after that date.

Rubber/metal composites tend to fail prematurely due to loss of adhesion of the rubber to the metal substrate, when they are exposed to aggressive conditions such as marine environments. The aim of this work is to elucidate the adhesion failure mechanism by cathodic disbonding and anodic undermining tests using a commercial bonding system for bonded rubber/metal.

Indonesia, along with two other members of the International Tripartite Rubber Council (ITRC) – Malaysia and Thailand – will cut the export of natural rubber in an attempt to stabilize the commodity’s global price. Starting 1 April 2019, Indonesia will cut rubber exports by 98,160 tons over the next four months, while Malaysia will cut the export by 15,600 tons and Thailand, the largest rubber producer, will cut 126,240 tons starting 20 May 2019.

In future Composites Europe and the trade association Composites Germany will cooperate even more closely and organise the International Composites Conference (ICC) jointly from 2019. The conference structure will be significantly revised and the former separation between trade fair and lecture events will end. This has been announced by trade fair organiser Reed Exhibitions and Composites Germany.