Plastic Packaging Products From China

DETROIT (July 27, 2010) — After years of breakneck growth at home, China’s parts makers are starting to reinvent themselves as global suppliers.

No longer content with shipping parts to North America, Chinese suppliers are acquiring U.S. companies and factories, often at bargain prices. In many cases they want to service North American customers — particularly General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co., which already do business with them in China.

In early July, for example, Tempo International Group, a Beijing supplier of brake, chassis and powertrain components, and its financial backer, the municipality of Beijing, formed a joint venture called Pacific Century Motors to purchase GM’s Nexteer steering components unit for a reported $450 million.

“We want to become a mainstream supplier,” Tempo Chairman Tianbao Zhou said in an interview last week at GM headquarters. “We want to blend in to the American culture.”

Tempo is following in the steps of Wanxiang Group Corp.

In 1969, Lu Guanqiu, a former apprentice blacksmith, launched a farm tool repair shop with his wife, five partners and $500. Later he started producing universal joints for automakers.

Now his Wanxiang Group Corp. generates global sales of $8 billion a year. Wanxiang is in Hangzhou in China’s Zhejiang province, on the eastern coast just south of Shanghai.

In 1994, Lu launched Wanxiang America Corp. in Elgin, Ill. In the late 1990s, the U.S. operation bought five distressed chassis component suppliers, keeping their American management in place.

Lu has continued buying. In 2007, the company purchased a driveshaft operation in Monroe, Mich., from Ford Motor Co.

The company’s U.S. sales totaled $1.3 billion last year. At a recent industry event in Detroit, Wanxiang America President Pin Ni said he would consider other acquisitions of distressed suppliers.

Other Chinese suppliers will follow, says C. Peter Theut, the founder of China Bridge, an Ann Arbor, Mich., consulting firm that helps complete mergers of Chinese and U.S. companies. Over the past year, “We’ve been approached by 12 Chinese companies that want to come West,” Theut says. Six were auto suppliers, he says.

Chinese cash

The Chinese generally seek small U.S. companies with niche products and annual sales of $20 million to $150 million. “The Chinese companies will come in with cash and supply the Americans with resources that they couldn’t get from U.S. lenders,” Theut says.

TORONTO (July 27, 2010) — China’s Yapp Automotive Parts Co. Ltd. and Canadian auto supplier ABC Group have created an alliance to provide plastic fuel tanks in Asia, North America and Europe.

The alliance does not involve any financial costs, but it should allow both firms more opportunities to bid on global projects just as automakers are creating more global vehicle platforms.

“Our combined footprint will satisfy the [carmakers],” said Robert Kunihiro, co-managing partner for Toronto-based ABC in a July 22 telephone interview. “We can be a one-stop shop, almost the equivalent of one company for design, engineering and manufacturing. This allows us to stand toe-to-toe with the big companies.”

ABC blow molds more than 1 million multi-layer fuel tanks annually for both auto and non-auto customers in North America. The company’s operations also include blow molding of exterior and functional parts, injection molding, thermoforming, rotational molding and polyurethane foam production. ABC also has its own in-house compounding and mold making units.

Yapp, based in Yangzhou, China, is the largest tank manufacturer in China, with eight tank molding facilities.

ITB Group Ltd., a Novi, Mich.-based consulting company that tracks the global fuel system business, estimates that 60 percent of the fuel tanks made in China are plastic, with Yapp producing 30 percent of the market.

Yapp also has one each in India, Australia and Russia and said it is building a new site in the Czech Republic. It briefly considered an alliance with tank maker Inergy Automotive Systems in 2005 that would have had Inergy buying a controlling stake in the company, but eventually decided to remain solo and pursue its own growth.

Now the alliance with ABC will provide it with another avenue for expansion.

Yapp, in a statement, said the alliance will help both companies “take full advantage of each other’s resources” and give them a worldwide production platform to accept global plastic fuel tank projects.

Yapp said the two firms will work together in both the development and manufacturing, and noted that the two firms have research and development centers in China and North America, respectively. It said the alliance will rank among the top three global suppliers of plastic fuel tanks.

ABC is one of the smallest fuel tank makers in North America, but the alliance with Yapp will give it far more opportunities than it would have had independently, said Joel Kopinsky, managing director for ITB Group.

“They’ve really been at a big disadvantage for several years, but this would give them more opportunities,” he said.

Carmakers are increasingly looking to create a car or truck that is built the same way in every market, rather than creating different versions of the same car in individual regions. They also want to work with a group of suppliers that can produce the same parts in multiple regions.

There are three major global plastic fuel tank makers now — Inergy, TI Automotive Ltd. and Kautex Textron GmbH. The Yapp and ABC alliance will give the two companies the ability to compete with those firms, with joint engineering and development and molding by ABC in North America and Yapp in Asia and Europe, Kunihiro said.

The Yapp and ABC alliance still will face an uphill battle against the big three tank makers, Kopinsky said. Europe is the biggest plastic fuel tank market, and TI, Inergy and Kautex all have extensive operations there. Even with Yapp’s new facilities, the two companies will be limited.

“It’s an interesting alliance,” he said. “It gives each of them a lot more opportunities by being together, but even together they’re still weak in Europe and weak globally.”

Alliances like the ABC and Yapp venture make sense for suppliers that want to compete on a global scale, but do it affordably, said Jim Gillette, director of supplier analysis with IHS Global Insight, an industry analyst based in Lexington, Mass.

“If you have two firms who are able to share their expertise without the huge investments in capital needed to set up operations in both locations, it makes sense,” he said.

Steve Toloken, Plastics News’ Asia bureau chief in Guangzhou, China, contributed to this report.

GUANGZHOU, CHINA (July 27, 2010) — Blow molding giant Graham Packaging Co. Inc., which entered the China market in April with its first acquisition there, has set an aggressive target of up to $300 million (2 billion yuan) in sales in China and Asia within five years.

The York, Pa.-based company is one of the world’s largest plastic container blow molders with 80 factories in the Americas and Europe. But it is a newcomer in Asia, with very small sales volumes, even after its April acquisition of a factory in Guangzhou, Guangdong province and a smaller investment in India in 2009.

The firm seems intent on growing quickly in Asia, though, and more acquisitions and investments are planned to tap into growing consumer markets there and boost sales to between $200 million ($1.35 billion yuan) and $300 million in five years, with China being the most important market, said Daniel Yu, general manager of Asia for Graham Packaging Co. LP.

In a July 21 interview at the Guangzhou factory Graham bought from China Roots Packaging PTE Ltd., Yu said Graham is looking across East Asia, at China, Indonesia, Thailand and other Southeast Asia nations, and Japan.

“We really have a very ambitious target,” he said. “We see the market potential and the demand here. What we really have to do is apply our technology to go after the market.”

The firm’s Asian sales are small now, with the Guangzhou factory’s sales estimated at $16.5 million (111 million Chinese yuan).

But if it comes close to hitting its Asian goal of $300 million, Graham’s sales there could be in the range of its second-largest region, Europe, where it had 2009 revenues of $235 million (1.59 billion yuan).

Graham had worldwide sales of $2.27 billion (15.3 billion yuan) in 2009, with 85 percent of that in North America.

Yu said the company is actively evaluating further investments.

“The primary approach will be through mergers and acquisitions, and the secondary approach will be to build a plant in the case of very strategic single-customer relationships,” Yu said.

Globally, consumer product makers including Procter and Gamble Co., Unilever Corp. and Groupe Danone are among its largest customers. Graham plans to target their substantial operations in Asia.

Graham plans to focus on some of its traditional packaging markets, like food and beverage, personal care and automotive lubricants. It also plans to target local Chinese and Asian brand owners, who are growing in their market sophistication and demands for packaging, Yu said.

“The local brand owners are becoming more and more important potential [customers] for us, and in certain market segments they are the dominant players,” he said.

In China, for example, local firms have strong positions in markets like laundry detergent, while multinationals have stronger positions in shampoos and personal care products, he said.

He said Graham sees its advantages in China in two areas: design and technology.

The company has a 200-strong global design and engineering staff worldwide that it can leverage to improve package design in Asia, including light-weighting bottles to save on material costs, which Yu said is important in China’s very competitive domestic market.

“The Chinese companies are more aggressive in achieving light-weighting, especially in the fast moving consumer goods areas like water and juice,” he said.

Graham plans to add to its design capabilities in China, he said.

The other advantage Graham sees for itself in China is its proprietary technology for rotary wheel blow molding machines, Yu said, which it claims improve efficiency and consistency in manufacturing in high-volume applications.

Graham claims the No. 1 position in North America for hot fill juices, sports drinks, yogurt drinks, liquid fabric care, dish detergent, hair care, and skin care bottles, and says it avoids markets like soft drinks and bottled water where there is less technology differentiation in the packaging.

The company is partly-owned by New York-based private equity firm Blackstone Group.

The Guangzhou factory was purchased from the parent company of China Roots, Malaysian garment maker PCCS Group Berhad. The plant has about 350 employees and does injection molding, injection blow molding and extrusion blow molding. It makes both bottles and closures for global and local firms. The acquisition closed July 1.

Yu, who is native Chinese, joined Graham as the Asia general manager in July 2009, after working as Asia president for U.K.-based Morgan Technical Ceramics, and stints with General Electric Co. and W.R. Grace & Co.

With the economy in better shape than a year ago, companies are casting their eye on Asia, in particular China, to capitalize on the need to supply product to that country’s growing middle-class.

“There will be an acceleration to areas outside the United States,” said Larry Wilton, CEO of contract manufacturer UPG Inc. in Oak Brook, Ill.

He added that UPG is “in position to handle business going offshore. But we might need to add another plant in China by the end of the year.

“We are already looking for where we want to be next,” said Wilton. “We want to be more inland,” maybe in northeast China, which he sees as an emerging low-cost area. “We won’t do that expansion until our current plant in China is at 100 percent capacity.

“Generally speaking, a 100,000-square-foot plant is what we look for,” Wilton said. “But if the plant has room for expansion, we can start with half that.”

Other companies are also casting eyes on increasing their China presence.

“We are seeing strength internationally and have launched programs with multinational companies in Asia, so we need to be in those countries” said Larry Bell, vice president of business development and marketing for GW Plastics Inc. in Bethel, Vt. “We will probably start to ramp up production of those programs in China in the second half of the year.

“We work with Fortune 500 companies that want and require a global footprint and companies who need precision molding capabilities,” Bell said. “They don’t want to duplicate and reinvent the wheel. We have got a good footprint in the U.S, but to continue to be a global supplier, we need to look to round that out. That will be driven by programs or customer needs. We’re bullish on our capabilities and long-term prospects.”

Nypro Inc. in Clinton, Mass. — which gets 35 percent of its revenue from medical — also projects China as a lucrative market.

“We are projecting the largest growth for India and China,” said Brian Payson, vice president of business development for Nypro Healthcare. “We see a strong emergence of device manufacturing in those countries.”

Similarly, MedPlast Inc. in Tempe, Ariz., plans to expand internationally with its customers, said Mike Farrell, executive vice president of sales and marketing.

“There is a need for global expansion, but it has to be selective and strategic. We are not just going to China to be in China. It will be in support of some or one of our customers,” Farrell said.

But clearly, being in China or having a larger presence in China is important for many medical molders and materials suppliers.

‘You are starting to see more American companies go to Asia to serve Asia and its middle-class,” said Tom O’Brien, product marketing manager for healthcare for Sabic Innovative Plastics in Pittsfield, Mass. “”As an industry, we have to be able to serve customers whether they are in the U.S, Europe or Asia.”

“Asia will clearly be a big opportunity for us because of the growth in the use of medical devices in that country,” said Larry Johnson, director of marketing for healthcare for specialized polymer compounder and distributor PolyOne Corp., headquartered in Avon Lake, Ohio.

“They [China] are going to start building their own devices for their own population. We are well-positioned to take advantage of that and that is going to happen within two to five years.”

Two Japanese companies are forming a $4.7 million joint venture in Indiana to blow mold auto parts.

KN Platech America Corp. will employ 99 people in Shelbyville, Ind., and begin limited production as soon as October in a renovated site, with full production set for 2011, said Dan Theobald, executive director of the Shelby County Development Corp. in a July 8 telephone interview.

KN is owned by Kyoraku Co. Ltd. of Osaka and Nagase & Co. Ltd. of Tokyo. It represents the first North American venture for blow molder Kyoraku. Nagase has some business in the U.S. with its additives operations. Its divisions also take in mold making, film and sheet production and raw materials.

The company will take over a building previously used as a metal stamping operation and supply parts to Honda Motor Co. Ltd. and other automakers. Honda is building a new assembly plant in nearby Greensburg, Ind.

Just days after China relaxed the yuan from its peg to the U.S. dollar — a move that could directly change the dynamics of China’s international trade, Beijing announced June 22 that the central government is phasing out the export tax rebates for hundreds of product categories, including some plastics items.

Starting July 15, export rebate taxes will no longer apply to plastic waste and industrial scrap, including polyethylene, PVC, polystyrene, PET and other plastics.

The policy change may have minimal impact, however, since China is the world’s largest importer of recycled plastics, but its exports of such materials are small.

The new policy also cancels export tax rebates for cellulose nitrate, cellulose acetate, carboxymethyl cellulose and compounds, cellulose ether and other related cellulose products

Bio-based polymers have made some modest in-roads into film and packaging applications but the more demanding property set required for injection molded parts has presented a tougher challenge. That situation is now changing as new additive and blending technologies come to the market.

In April, German molder Amper Plastik R. Dittrich revealed it is using Biograde C 7500CL cellulose ester compound from FKuR for the base of a new keyboard, which features 45 percent renewable material content.

The Fujitsu KBPC PX ECO also contains Arboform, a colorable, biodegradable plastic produced with lignin sourced from waste wood and paper by Tecnaro. The lignin-based plastic has “polystyrene-like” properties and provides the keyboard’s “warm-feel” palm rest.

The keyboard is part of Fujitsu’s “Green IT” program. Rajat Kakar, vice president of the clients group at Fujitsu Technical Solutions, says it is no more expensive than one made of conventional plastics.

“We are making it easy for users to decide in favour of the environment,” he says.

Amper adds that the company has now replaced 60 metric tons per year of conventional plastics with the two biodegradable materials. ABS is still used for laser-printed key caps and the upper housing, but Fujitsu says it is working on changing all remaining parts, aiming at a keyboard consisting of 100 percent renewable raw materials.

In April, Nova Institute presented innovation awards to two biodegradable plastic products at its bio-based plastics and composites congress in Hanover. The first prize – biomaterial of the year – went to Propper for its Proganic brand compound of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), carnauba wax and natural mineral filler, which was used to make a watering can.

The can was shown in February at the Ambiente 2010 consumer goods fair in Frankfurt and is now available on the market alongside flowerpots. Propper says it the material could also be used to manufacture disposable cutlery.

Henkel also picked up an award for its use of a new injection molding optimized polylactic acid (PLA) compound in the ECOmfort version of its Pritt correction roller. The roller will reach the market this year. Henkel says the Pritt ECOmfort is the first correction roller to reach an 89 percent natural plastic content.

Meanwhile, NatureWorks has announced that its new Ingeo 3801X PLA-based formulation – a combination of 65-75 percent PLA base and various additives – can be used to produce injection molded parts with thermal dimensional stability up to 120ºC. The material ensures the impact strength and cycle time requirements of semi-durable products.

In the automotive industry, Bernd Koal, development and planning manager at Volkswagen, spoke about developments with PLA at the March 2010 VDI plastics in automotive engineering conference. PLA provides high flexural modulus, scratch resistance, good contour forming and some blending capabilities, but these features are countered by brittleness, high density, limited heat distortion temperature, long crystallisation time with associated long cycle time, low shrinkage and undetermined long-term properties, says Koal.

Despite the fact PLA can be improved with blending and fibre reinforcement, the automotive industry needs to work further on the material before it can be used in interiors, he said.

Meanwhile, the Fiat central research department (CRF) in Orbassano near Turin, Italy, has been looking at a 15-20 percent kenaf fiber-reinforced aliphatic polyester-modified PLA developed by Italian masterbatch and compound producer EuroMaster in Prato. Fiat CRF is considering using this Bioter blend for a front seat storage container for its next Croma car.

While such compounds have a density disadvantage over conventional unreinforced thermoplastics, CRF has produced a lighter but stiffer part using gas-assist molding to hollow out a reinforcing channel around the upper rim of the container.

The Fiat CRF work was presented in a joint paper by Dr Guido Belfiore of EuroMaster and Prof Giovanni Levita of Pisa University at the Third ATA automotive technical association convention on ecologically sustainable and recyclable materials in transport at the end of last year.

COLUMBUS, OHIO (July 5, 2010) — New Polymer Systems Inc. in New Canaan, Conn. is commercializing a bio-based additive that not only lowers compound cost, but also improves performance. President Joachim Roesler also is seeking a manufacturing location for the product in the Midwest.

NPS has developed a new type of filler based on modification of lignocellulose fibers, which also occurs naturally within lignite coal. Unlike other bio-based fillers such as wood, grass, straw, rice hulls, NPS’ modified lignocellulose — marketed as Neroplast — stands out with high moisture-resistance and a tolerance for higher processing temperatures.

“Hydrophilic bio-fibers can be treated in other ways to become hydrophobic, but those processes tend to be more expensive, or degrade other characteristics,” explained Roesler, who spoke at the Ohio Polymer Summit 2010 in Columbus earlier this month.

The new product also helps improve physical properties of thermoplastics, including stiffness, tensile strength, and bending strength. Most parameters of compounded modified lignocellulose are similar to those of wood flour, which is consumed at an annual volume of 500,000 metric tons for the production of wood plastic composites.

The new filler can be mixed with polypropylene, polyethylene and polyamide, and the company believes more research will extend the use to other plastic resins.

Targeted applications include pallets, landscape, roofing, drainage pipes, and parts for the auto industry. The product is the only bio-based filler that’s sufficiently temperature-resistant to be blended with nylon, Roesler noted.

Due to the base material, the filler’s currently available color options are from dark brown to black. It can work as a substitute for carbon black.

In addition, the filler is less abrasive and significantly lighter than common mineral fillers, such as talc.

Since lignocellulose is low cost, abundant and renewable, the filler offers competitive price and eco benefits.

Moreover, the green technology has the potential to help accelerate the market acceptance of other bioplastics, Roesler added. The bio-based filler can lower the cost of bioplastic compounds while maintaining full bio-renewability. The filler has proven characteristics as a soil conditioner, useful when compounded with biodegradable resins.

Roesler said NPS and its German sister company have filed for U.S. and European patents for the new product, which will become available in large quantities in late 2010.

He is currently evaluating locations for its first manufacturing site. “It’ll be in the Midwest,” he told Plastics News. Roesler is also seeking location-specific public or private support.

From Nina Ying Sun
PLASTICS NEWS

WASHINGTON (July 5, 2010) — The decision by the plastics recycling industry to recommend that consumers replace plastic caps and lids on plastic bottles and containers they recycle is part of the industry’s continuing effort to increase the amount of material collected and to avoid sending consumers conflicting messages.

“The consensus of our membership was that it was far better for APR to have more volume of material,” said Scott Saunders, chairman of the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers, whose members have more than 90 percent of the post-consumer plastic recycling capacity in North America. Saunders also is general manager of KW Plastics Recycling in Troy, Ala.

“This was the most-asked question by municipalities whenever we conduct our outreach programs, and our members told us they have the ability to handle bottles and containers with caps on,” Saunders said.

“We didn’t want to confuse consumers by telling them we want their polypropylene and high density polyethylene containers, but not the PP lids.”

Most PET soft drink bottles have PP closures. PET water bottles typically have either PP or HDPE caps, while PET juice and energy drink containers typically have PP caps.

The National Association for PET Container Resources in Sonoma, Calif., supports the stance taken by APR.

“I am sure we will follow their lead. This is the reclaimer’s call,” said NAPCOR technical director Mike Schedler.

“The reality is that leaving plastic closures on the bottle does not add costs,” Schedler said. “Having more caps doesn’t alter the removal and retrieval systems. They are going to operate the same.”

Saunders said Washington-based APR felt that it needed to “clarify things.”

“There is a lot of interest in our beyond the bottle initiative,” Saunders said. “We felt telling people to leave caps on when they recycle would generate more pounds and be a better message to tell the communities and people who recycle. We want to assure recycling coordinators, [material recovery facility] operators and other collectors of recyclables that plastics recyclers will process these bottles and recover the caps for recycling purposes.”

The issue of keeping lids on or taking them off PET and HDPE bottles has been a back-and-forth issue within the plastic recycling community for years. But the consensus approval from members drove the APR decision to ask people to place caps and lids back on bottles and containers, Saunders said.

Still, the most ideal situation, in most cases, said Saunders would be if beverage companies used the same resin for bottles and lids, and if HDPE container manufacturers switched to HDPE caps and spouts, rather than the PP caps and spouts commonly used on HDPE containers today.

“APR is working with bottle manufacturers and designers to bring that discussion to the forefront so that as designs are being made for new products, the question of using a single resin is taken into consideration,” Saunders said. “When resins are mixed, it degrades the recycling stream.”

APR also strongly recommended that plastic packaging manufacturers and brand owners be consistent with its design-for-recyclability guidelines. The APR guidelines recommend that PET and polypropylene bottles, such as beverage containers, use polypropylene caps and that HDPE bottles, such as detergent containers, use HDPE caps.

Mike Verespej
PLASTICS NEWS