Nouryon announced that it has chosen to rename its wholly-owned Industrial Chemicals business to Nobian. According to the company, this branding change will allow Nobian to develop its integrated European value chain for essential base chemicals under its own name and brand while Nouryon will continue to focus on growing its leading position in global speciality chemicals.

BASF is a founding member of a new global network dedicated to building a circular economy in the self-adhesive labelling industry. CELAB (Toward a Circular Economy for Labels) is a cross-industry coalition open to all companies in the self-adhesive label supply chain, promoting sustainability through encouraging collaboration, kick-starting regional initiatives, and developing best practices.

Covestro’s family of partially bio-based thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) is now marketed under the name Desmopan EC.

Ceresana has published the fourth edition of its Market Study: Adhesives Europe in January 2021. In 2019, a total of around 3.51 million tonnes were utilized. The market researchers expect sales generated with adhesives across Europe to grow by 0.5 % per year until 2027.

Wittmann Battenfeld has intensified the cooperation between its Sales and Application Engineering departments. To this end, special focal areas of application technology have been defined and appropriate reorganization measures taken. Six fields have been selected to receive special attention over the next two years: medical technology, micro injection molding, packaging technology, elastomer engineering, multi-component injection molding and light-weight design. Wolfgang Roth, Head of Application Engineering will be in charge of directing the product experts jointly with Valentina Faloci, Head of Sales.

Arburg announced that in January 2021 it has entered into a trade partnership with LSVN Co. Ltd. to expand its injection moulding business in Vietnam. Headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City, LSVN has more than 20 years of experience in the field of injection moulding, during which time it has successfully established itself as a distribution partner and service provider for the injection moulding industry.

Covestro has received ISCC Plus mass balance certification for its Antwerp, Belgium, and Krefeld-Uerdingen, Germany, sites. This means the company can now offer its customers large product volumes of polycarbonate made from renewable attributed raw materials in the same good quality as fossil-based polycarbonate. The polyurethane raw material methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) from Krefeld-Uerdingen and its precursor aniline from the Antwerp plant are now also available with ISCC Plus certification.

Due to the corona pandemic, Deutsche Kautschuk Gesellschaft e. V. has rescheduled DKT IRC 2021 to summer 2022. After intensive consultation, the committee responsible for organizing DKT IRC 2021 has decided that the conference and trade show cannot take place as planned from 28 June to 1 July 2021. The trade exhibition will be moved to 27 to 30 June 2022. The venue NürnbergMesse will remain the same.

The use of plastics in railway vehicles has represented the state of the art for a number of years now. In component production for this field, too, 3D printing is becoming increasingly important, with 3D printed plastics being put to use on both the outside and inside of railway vehicles. Apart from its use in new vehicles, additive manufacturing is also displaying its strengths in the production of spare parts. The required components can be produced cost-effectively in small and medium-size quantities and, in some cases, the reacquisition of parts only becomes possible at all through 3D printing.

Repsol and TactoTek have announced that they seek to expand the use of polyolefins in smart surfaces.