Sep 18 2004
The Dow Chemical Company has announced the successful start-up of the first commercial plant for its new family of specialty propylene-ethylene copolymers, VERSIFY* Plastomers and Elastomers, in Tarragona, Spain.
“VERSIFY Plastomers and Elastomers are an innovative and unique addition to Dow’s plastics portfolio that both completes and enhances our specialty polymer offering,” said Romeo Kreinberg, senior vice president for Plastics. “The product range combines Dow’s strength in catalyst and process technology as well as material and polymer science to bridge current product performance gaps and help meet unmet customer needs. The strong customer demand and interest has accelerated the start up of our first commercial plant just seven months after the product introduction.”
Launched in February 2004, VERSIFY Plastomers & Elastomers are a highly versatile family of polymers designed to improve optics, sealing and hot tack performance, elasticity, flexibility, and softness for flexible and rigid packaging producers, manufacturers of thermoplastic elastomers and olefins, and converters in the consumer products sector. New catalyst systems combine with Dow’s proprietary INSITE* Technology to offer a range of olefinic polymers that deliver a unique balance of performance properties for producers of films, fibers and molded parts. VERSIFY Plastomer & Elastomer grades also offer customers the opportunity to explore new application areas thanks to their good processability and compatibility with other polymers.
“Customer feedback since our product launch earlier this year has been tremendous, confirmed by strong sales orders across a number of key application areas,” said Ralf Brinkmann, global product director. “We are excited to see how quickly customers have taken advantage of this new polymer technology and have already started to introduce winning product solutions into their market segments based on the unique technology used to produce VERSIFY Plastomers & Elastomers.”
The VERSIFY Plastomers & Elastomers production facility is part of Dow’s strategic, fully integrated production complex in Tarragona; an integral component of Dow’s global supply network. The first production unit has an annual nameplate capacity of 57 KMT, and will produce a range of VERSIFY Plastomers & Elastomers grades to support the needs of a variety of market segments and applications.
For more information on elastomers, click here.