After one year without trade fairs, the companies of the Feddersen Group are finally looking forward to meeting their business partners in person again at Fakuma 2021. They will be coming up with a whole bouquet of new products and services to provide ideas and inspiration for new, future-oriented and sustainable applications.
In Hall B2/2209, the following companies of the Feddersen Group will be exhibiting together: K.D. Feddersen GmbH & Co. KG, K.D. Feddersen Ueberseegesellschaft mbH, AKRO-PLASTIC GmbH, AF-COLOR, branch of AKRO-PLASTIC GmbH, BIO-FED, Branch of AKRO-PLASTIC GmbH, PolyComp GmbH and M.TEC ENGINEERING GmbH.
Plastics distributor K.D. Feddersen GmbH & Co. KG sealed a cooperation with Ascend Performance Materials, the world’s largest fully integrated manufacturer of polyamide 6.6, at the beginning of 2021. The Ascend product families include unreinforced, reinforced, impact-modified and flame-retardant engineering plastics as well as other special formulations for extrusion and injection moulding. Since March 2021, the company has also expanded its portfolio in Germany and Europe to include the Hostaform® (POM), Vectra®(LCP), Celanex®(PBT) and Fortron® (PPS) medical grade range from Celanese.
The Feddersen Group’s cooperation with the Korean company Hyosung Chemical was also intensified in Europe. Since spring, K.D. Feddersen GmbH & Co. KG and its regional subsidiaries distribute all polyketone grades belonging to the Hyosung brand POKETONE™ in Germany and Europe, after the sister company K.D. Feddersen Ueberseegesellschaft mbH with its Polymers & Compounding Technology business unit has been selling mainly its extrusion grades to the compounding industry since 2015.
Thermal management will become increasingly important in future developments of alternative drive concepts. To ensure all this, suppliers to the automotive industry must use application-optimised materials, such as Hostacom EKG 2087T from Lyondellbasell. This grade is a polypropylene (PP) copolymer reinforced with 30 % short glass fibres. The PP compound shows superior performance in terms of creep resistance compared to standard grades.
Notably, the distributor has also expanded its range of materials from alternative, sustainable sources, accessing many new, special products from its partners Celanese, TRINSEO, AURORA Kunststoffe GmbH and BIO-FED, Branch of AKRO-PLASTIC GmbH and member of the Feddersen Group. The thus expanded portfolio includes additional biobased and biodegradable plastics as well as high-quality recycled materials from post-industrial as well as mass-balanced sources with a property and quality level that is close to or even equal to that of virgin materials. In terms of the circular economy, the new alternatives offer potential solutions for reducing the carbon footprint.
Cologne-based BIO-FED will also be exhibiting on the group’s joint stand and focuses on its biocompound product range, which is suitable for flexible and solid applications as well as for a wide range of manufacturing processes.
Several grades from the M-VERA® GP series are already certified according to OK compost HOME for processing in injection moulding. These are almost 100 % biobased and are also suitable for food contact applications. In addition, there are numerous injection moulding materials that are certified according to OK compost INDUSTRIAL (according to EN 13432).
BIO-FED offers transparent and filled biocompounds for thermoforming and profile extrusion. Certification according to OK compost INDUSTRIAL is currently in preparation.
Materials are also available for blow moulding applications and for monofilaments (e.g. 3D printing).
For film extrusion, the company offers biocompounds with OK compost HOME certification, for example for fruit and vegetable bags. Special soil-degradable grades for mulch films are also available. The corresponding SOIL certification according to EN 17033 by DIN CERTCO is also currently in preparation. A steady expansion of the portfolio with further biobased and biodegradable products in the sense of the circular economy and the Green Deal is in the works.
Together with AF-COLOR, also a branch of AKRO-PLASTIC GmbH, the company works on color and additive concentrates for numerous problem solutions in the field of recycling management. The products resulting from the cooperation make a significant contribution here.
The soot-free masterbatches of the AF-Color® IR product range contribute to improved NIR detection of different kinds of plastics in the field of waste sorting.
Likewise, the in-house research and development department of AF-COLOR and BIO-FED products is working on an odour absorber on the basis of biobased, biodegradable and environmentally compatible additives for example. These special additive masterbatches will be available as AF-Eco® after certification within EN 13432, or otherwise distributed as part of the AF-Complex® portfolio.
Furthermore, within the AF-Color®-HP product range for high-temperature polymers, AF-COLOR offers you new color shades for the coloring of polyamide, such as a bright orange for e-mobility applications.
A newly developed PA-compatible blowing agent product range enables a variety of different applications in the field of lightweight construction.
Sustainability is a high priority at AKRO-PLASTIC. CO2-neutral electricity and gas have already been used for production and the administration buildings since 2019. At Fakuma 2021, the new sustainable product ranges AKROMID® NEXT and PRECITE® NEXT will be presented for the first time.
One representative of the future-oriented AKROMID® NEXT portfolio is the partially bio-based AKROMID® NEXT G based on PA 6.9. As a density-reduced “LITE” compound, with a proportion of bio-circular PP and processed carbon fibres, sustainability is raised to a new level. By combining it with chemical or physical foaming processes, the idea of lightweight construction can be taken even further. The combination of sustainability, low density and hydrolysis resistance predestines the material for the cooling water circuits of future electric vehicles, for example.
In addition, AKRO-PLASTIC and its subsidiaries BIO-FED and AF-COLOR will have various sustainable products certified according to the leading sustainability certification systems ISCC PLUS or REDcert2. “We would like to exchange views with visitors on these certification systems at the trade fair,” says Thilo Stier, Head of Sales and Innovation at AKRO-PLASTIC.
With the boom in additive manufacturing (3D printing), another highly interesting field of application for polyamides is currently developing. Here, the compounder offers material solutions with its high carbon fibre-reinforced compounds that provide both outstanding mechanical properties and a high production speed with the highest batch consistency at the same time. “3D printing with pellets has already been tested in series production. The speed in product development and scalability of additive manufacturing has been impressively implemented by Faurecia and Yizumi Germany for the carpooling company MOIA. Using AKROMID® B3 ICF 30 AM (7451), which is optimised for additive manufacturing, hygiene shields were produced within a very short time, making operations safer in times of corona. Of course, the application meets the demanding requirements of the automotive industry,” says Thilo Stier.
The Aachen-based engineering company M.TEC ENGINEERING GmbH, which is also part of the company group, is expanding the AI-based development method for warpage optimisation of plastic components into a group of simulation-based development tools. This allows topics such as sustainability, economic efficiency and innovation to be integrated into the engineering of products and processes. How exactly this works will be explained to the interested trade fair audience on site.
