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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 NEW POLYOLEFINS MEET GREEN DESIGN CHALLENGES AUSTRALIAN PLASTICS CONFAB PROMOTES CIRCULAR ECONOMY Presenters See Rules, Fees As Growth Incentives PLUSINSIDE PLASTICS ENGINEERING VOLUME 79 NUMBER 1 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 10 FLEXIBLE AND RECYCLABLE Industry turns to monomaterial packaging for circular economy needs. 14 GET YOUR OWN! Plastics Engineering keeps plastics industry professionals informed of the latest news and in-depth reporting on state-of-the-art and emerging technologies that impact the R&D and processing of plastics products. This is the magazine every plastics industry professional NEEDS to read. 4spe.org/Subscribe 4 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR NEW POLYOLEFINS MEET DEMANDING USE AND SUSTAINABILITY NEEDS High-performing grades of recycled and virgin resins combine to boost the circularity of products in diverse markets. COVER STORY www.plasticsengineering.org | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | 144 | New Product News 5 | Set Point Mulholland is new SPE president; eco sample kit broadens selection 47 | Calendar 48 | Ad/Editorial Index INSIDE PLASTICS ENGINEERING VOLUME 79 NUMBER 1 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 33 | Additive Technology Drives Clarified PP Resin Growth Near glass-like clarity makes the polyolefin a sustainable packaging option in many applications. 22 9 | The Legal Angle Government report cites deficiencies in FDA food-contact regulations ENHANCED CONTROLS Process developments reduce cost and improve sustainability of film and sheet extrusion. 20 EXTRACTING VALUE FROM ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING Fast-growing 3D printing market is slowing and exposing weak business plans. THE UNBROKEN CIRCLE Flexible packaging’s popularity makes its circularity vital, experts say. 17 COME ONE, COME ALL ANTEC conference will have something for everyone this year in Denver, and then some. 30 AI TUNES PLASTICS PROCESSING Industry 4.0 technology improves process quality and economics by optimizing operations. 26 34 | Big Conference, Bold Topics Industry and academia to discuss developments affecting supply and markets at polyolefins confab. 36 | Thunder From Down Under SPE chapter conference issues communique of priorities for industry growth in Australia. 42 | Greenlight Innovations SPE Auto TPO conference highlights ongoing shift to sustainability in global vehicle development. 2 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 | www.plasticsengineering.orgPatrick Toensmeier Editor-in-Chief (203) 777-1474 ptoensmeier@4spe.org Michael Greskiewicz Director, Sales & Advertising (203) 740-5411 mgreskiewicz@4spe.org Ryan Foster Art Director (203) 740-5410 rfoster@4spe.org Sue Wojnicki Chief Operating Officer (203) 740-5420 swojnicki@4spe.org Editorial & Publishing Staff President Bruce Mulholland CEO Patrick Farrey President-Elect Conor Carlin Vice President – Chapters ScottEastman Vice President – Business & Finance, Treasurer James Waddell Elected Director Todd Bier Elected Director Praveen Boopalachandran Elected Director Lynzie Nebel Past President Jason Lyons SPE 2023-2024 Board of Directors Contributing Editors NANCY D. LAMONTAGNE ndlamontagne@gmail.com Nancy D. Lamontagne reports on science, technology and engineering. Topics she covers for Plastics Engineering include thermoforming, blow molding, medical plastics, packaging, and education and career development. ROBERT GRACE bob@rcgrace.com Robert Grace has been in B2B journalism since 1980. He covers design and business for Plastics Engineering and is editor of SPE’s Journal of Blow Molding. Professional memberships include the Industrial Designers Society of America. JENNIFER MARKARIAN technicalwritingsolutions@comcast.net Jennifer Markarian has been reporting on the plastics industry for more than 20 years, covering a range of technology topics. She is also the newsletter editor for SPE’s Palisades-MidAtlantic Chapter. ERIC F. GREENBERG Eric Greenberg focuses on food and drug law, packaging law and commercial litigation. Work includes regulatory counseling, label and claims review, product development, GRAS, food contact materials evaluations and clearances, and related areas. www.plasticsengineering.org | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | 3 PEGGY MALNATI peggy@malnatiandassociates.com Peggy Malnati has over 30 years’ experience covering plastics, composites and automotive. She has organized technical conferences for SPE and served as board member and communications chair for SPE’s Automotive Division. GEOFF GIORDANO geoffgio@verizon.net Geoff Giordano has been a contributor to Plastics Engineering since 2009, covering a range of topics, including additives, infrastructure, flexible electronics, design software, 3D printing and nanotechnology. FROM THE W e concluded this department in 2022 by commenting on a Greenpeace USA report that claims plastics are not recyclable, single-use packaging generates “trillions of pieces of plastic confetti” annually, commingled plastics cannot be recycled, and plastics recycling is, in all cases, “wasteful, polluting and a fire hazard,” as well as uneconomical (November/December 2022 Plastics Engineering, p. 4). That’s a lot of ground to cover in a report that’s only 18 pages long, and whose title, “Circular Claims Fall Flat Again: 2022 Update,” suggests that it is hardly a fair look at plastics and recycling. So, let’s begin this department in 2023 by looking at Australia, where a plastics conference in Melbourne, coordinated by the Australian- New Zealand chapter of SPE and titled “Plastics and the Circular Economy,” attracted 150 attendees from Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Europe. Speakers discussed the challenges and priorities for continued success in Australia’s plastics industry. They took what organizers said was the unusual step of releasing a communique which stated that Australia is at a fork in the road when it comes to sustainability and the circular economy. The country will either attract billion- dollar global investment to become an efficient circular plastics economy, speakers advised, or lose vital manufacturing capacity and competitive advantage if it does not. As an article about the conference makes clear (see p. 36), the communique reflects concerns over Australia’s rising emissions, growing plastic pollution, uneconomic plastics recycling, increasing losses of recyclable materials to landfills and the potential collapse of key plastics manufacturing supply chains and capabilities. There is also frustration at the lack of industry progress in meeting mandated plastics goals and determination that concerted action is needed to remove regulatory barriers that prevent improvements to the types of plastics allowed in Australia. Attendees are stymied that the rates for recycling and recycled content in products and packaging in Australia have been static for a decade and that national targets set for 2025 and 2030 will fail to be met. Many attendees said they would like to see recycling rates rise to the levels of countries like South Korea and France, which compete with Australia in plastics. It was pointed out that Australia has made important investments in recycling infrastructure. But ongoing investment of AUD$10 billion (about US$6.86 billion) is required to reach the government’s 80 percent waste reduction target by 2030. CEOs at the conference said they would invest at scale should the vision, policies and settings around plastics improve and barriers to growth be removed. Attendees urged government, industry, major sectors and supply chains to collaborate in developing policies, strategies and targets that will reset financial, legal, regulatory, certification and performance standards for plastics products. Additional points included the observation that landfill levies must double if Australia is serious about keeping a valuable resource like waste plastics out of them, and the country’s voluntary approach to recycled content is “weak.” Improving the economics of recycling will result in multimillion-dollar investments in mechanical and advanced (chemical) recycling processes, speakers said, which would benefit several product sectors and regions of the country. It's too soon to say what response the communique gets from the industry and others. However, both the conference and the communique exemplify the determination of Australia’s plastics industry to meet the challenges of recycling, sustainability and the circular economy head on and in the process develop strategies of benefit to everyone. There is no effort in Australia, or elsewhere, to conceal or sugarcoat the global challenges plastics face in manufacturing, applications and sustainability. The message that the industry delivered loudly and clearly in Melbourne is that cooperation is key to achieving the environmental goals that responsible parties seek when it comes to the occasionally nettlesome issue of managing plastics—before, during and after use. Members of the plastics industry do not, at the end of the day, retreat to a magic kingdom where they and their families are immune to the problems of poor materials stewardship. Efforts by Greenpeace and other activists to sway opinion with half-truths, biased reports and prejudicial actions won’t achieve the objectives that society needs to thrive and advance with a material— plastics—that has had a huge and positive impact on quality-of-life issues. Happy New Year! PAT TOENSMEIER Editor-in-Chief ptoensmeier@4spe.org AUSTRALIA CONFRONTS PLASTICS CHALLENGES 4 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 | www.plasticsengineering.orgSET POINT MULHOLLAND LEADS SPE AS PRESIDENT, THREE ELECTED TO EXECUTIVE BOARD SPE’s president for 2023 has taken office and three new members have been elected to the board of directors. Bruce Mulholland became SPE president for the customary one- year term that began Jan. 1 and runs through Dec. 31. Conor Carlin, managing director of thermoform machine manufacturer Illig North America serves as president-elect this year, after which he will begin a one-year term as SPE president starting on Jan. 1, 2024. The three directors elected to the board are: Todd Bier, account manager at Palmer Holland Inc.; Dr. Praveen Boopalachandran, research scientist at Dow; and Lynzie Nebel, upstream quote engineer at Cytivia. The directors serve 3-year terms from 2023 to 2026. Mulholland, who has been a member of SPE for 38 years, retired in 2021 from Celanese as a Color Technology Fellow. He holds over 15 patents in color and appearance technologies and has presented 20-plus technical papers at industry events—more than a dozen of which were ANTECs. He won the Celanese President’s Award twice and received a lifetime achievement award from the company for technical excellence. In addition to his corporate experience, Mulholland’s time as an SPE member, serving on the board of the Color and Appearance (CAD) division and for 3-plus years on the executive board provided him with many opportunities to refine the skills necessary for an extensive leadership role within the organization. Recent achievements include leading CAD through an organizational change that made its board stronger and more effective and leading Governance Task Force 2.0 in its work to change the governance model of SPE. Mulholland has a long record of success with SPE events. As conference chair of CAD RETEC 2008 in Detroit during the economic downturn, he faced many challenges, but the event was rated a success by attendees and made money for the division. Being CAD chairman in 2001 and navigating the CAD RETEC that year in the aftermath of 9/11 was also daunting, but successful under his leadership. He has been involved with two governance task forces and led the society’s Bylaws and Policies (B&P) committee for more than six years. The B&P experience especially demonstrated his organizational skills, meticulousness and hard- working nature, which will be assets in leading SPE and honing a strategic direction for the future. Conor Carlin serves as the first vice president of sustainability in SPE’s history. He was elected to the executive board in 2017 and in 2020. A member of SPE since 2000, he is editor of SPE’s Thermoforming and Recycling Division publications. Carlin has written articles on plastics and sustainability for publications in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and is the co-author and editor of the 2nd edition of Plastics & Sustainability: Grey Is the New Green, published by Scrivener/Wiley. Prior to joining Illig, Carlin spent six years in international business with a specialized materials firm establishing distribution networks in Europe and Asia. In 2019, he was recruited to join Illig as managing director of the North American subsidiary. Carlin has a BA degree from Boston University and an MBA from Babson College. Todd Bier, meanwhile, has 22 years of experience in color, additive, compound and distribution sales. Prior to his position with Palmer Holland he served as account manager at multiple processors selling a range of materials to companies such as Uniform Color, PolyOne and PolyTech South/ Spartech. Bier became a Young Professional SPE member in 2000. He joined the Southern Section and became a board member holding the positions of secretary, vice chair, president and tech program chair. One of his goals is to promote and be part of the next wave of young plastics professionals, as well as to inspire them to get involved with SPE and its chapters and participate in society events as well as other industry events. Dr. Praveen Boopalachandran has been involved with SPE for eight years in various capacities: division chair, division board member, technical paper reviewer and presenter. His leadership at Dow has driven the field of global optical spectroscopy forward by helping to define the technology and strategy behind its application, in addition to identifying immediate end-use needs. Boopalachandran is a technical subject matter expert at Dow, as well as an innovator and inventor, and has published numerous technical articles, conference publications and patents. He is currently Dow’s Optical Global Technology Network leader for a group of more than 30 team members and serves as an analytical focal point for Dow’s polyurethane business, where he provides measurement science solutions for R&D and monitoring and evaluation applications. He is a certified Six Sigma Green Belt project leader. He is also part of Dow’s Inclusion & Diversity steering team for core R&D and has organized and led several allies discussion group meetings to create open, safe, positive opportunities for individuals at the company. He is recognized as well as a creative thinker who has partnered with and led teams to assist Dow’s innovation process and to solve critical issues for customers. These activities have contributed to business growth. Boopalachandran has eight filed patents, 18 invention concept disclosures and more than 30 external presentations and publications to his credit. Before joining Dow, he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Minnesota. He received a master’s degree and PhD from Texas A&M University. Lynzie Nebel has been reelected to the board of directors. She was appointed to the board in 2018 and elected in 2019. She is currently SPE’s vice president of member engagement. Bruce Mulholland continued on p. 8 www.plasticsengineering.org | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | 5SET POINT The European initiative known as Positive Plastics, which curates and disseminates sample kits of sustainable plastic materials, is gaining momentum after its initial launch in the fall of 2021. The trio of entrepreneurs rolled out their second set of sample kits at the K 2022 trade fair in Düsseldorf, Germany, last October. The project is the brainchild of Munich-based materials consultant and strategist Efrat Friedland and her two colleagues, Finnish product developer Markus Paloheimo and Danish design engineer Erik Moth-Müller. Headquartered in Finland, Positive Plastics Oy says it “aims to convey a more accepting outlook on plastics to designers, engineers and product managers.” Each kit features plastic materials with a low environmental footprint, including post-consumer recyclates (PCR), post-industrial recyclates (PIR), biobased grades, mass-balanced grades and bio- composites sourced from various manufacturers. As reported earlier (February 2022 Plastics Engineering, p. 26), the kit does more than provide a basic sample of each curated material. A complex, molded, square-shaped sample is used to show how the material in question behaves under different conditions, what properties it has and potential applications. Sample data demonstrate more than a dozen different mechanical capabilities and properties, such as weight, suitability for a living hinge, draft angle requirements, stress points, warpage, shrinkage, sensitivity to sink marks, fluidity and different wall thicknesses. Each sample also contains various surface treatments, including electrical discharge machining (EDM) and polished and machined surfaces, to show how the material reflects these processes. The first kits contained 16 materials; the second iteration has 18. “The second kit contains more experimental, yet commercially available, materials,” Friedland said in a recent interview. “For example, it includes compounds containing recycled Tetra-Pak containers, sequestered carbon, crustaceous matter, beer and more.” Sample suppliers for the kit are Akro Plastic GmbH, Authentic Material, Bio-Fed, Brightplus, Covation Biomaterials, Covestro, Furakawa Electric, Granulous, Made of Air, Mocom, Polyvisions, Resirene, Sappi and Solvay. (See more about each material at www.positiveplastics.eu) All grades are suitable for injection molding to produce high-quality products, such as consumer electronics, home appliances, sporting goods, automotive interiors and various accessories. Here’s how the kits are assembled. From each polymer partner, Positive Plastics requests 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of pellets of chosen material. Using those resins, Positive Plastics works with Finnish injection molder Plastep Oy to produce 500 samples of each. The supplier receives 150 of the molded samples. Another 250 are used in kits that are sold online. And finally—and importantly— Friedland and her colleagues then leverage their design contacts and send the remaining 100 kits, free of charge, to key brands and design agencies of their choosing. Designers, Friedland noted, often have a difficult time getting the information they need about alternatives to fossil-based polymers. Positive Plastics provides a qualified shortcut to that process. “More than 250 brands and design agencies— mostly brands—are using our kits,” Friedland said in early December. “Some already have the second kit. We received fantastic feedback from both users and materials suppliers, so we are very positive about Kit 3, coming up in October 2023. We are happy to be reassured by product design teams that such materials are exactly what they are looking for.” ENGEL IS EXPANDING IN AUSTRIA, NAMES FUHRMANN AUTOMATION VP Injection machine manufacturer and automation specialist Engel, of Schwertberg, Austria, will invest €11 million ($11.66 million) to increase robot production and related activities at its Dietach plant in that country. The production area, logistics, apprentice workshop and office building will be expanded and modernized in two phases beginning in May 2023. In a related announcement, Engel says that Jörg Fuhrmann was appointed vice president of automation and composite systems. The capital expenditure is in response to growing global demand for robots and integrated system solutions for injection molding. “We supply well over half of all injection molding machines produced by Engel with integrated automation technology, and the trend is continuing to grow,” says Dr. Stefan Engleder, CEO of Engel Group. Founded in 1980, the Dietach plant develops and produces three robot series: the Viper linear robot, the E-pic pick-and-place robot and the pic A sprue picker. The expansion will offer usable floor space of more than 3,000 square meters (over 32,280 square feet). Among the upgrades to be made, the flow assembly line will be modernized. As a result, Engel “will be able to respond in a far more flexible way to customer requests and short-term order changes without prolonging lead times,” says Engleder. By spring 2024, the production, logistics and apprentice workshop areas will have been completed and a new photovoltaic system will be in operation. With the expenditure in Dietach, all three Engel production plants in Austria will generate their own green electricity using photovoltaics. Following expansion of the production Eco-friendly sample kit from Positive Plastics gives designers and brand owners sustainable options to conventional fossil fuel-based polymers. Courtesy of Positive Plastics NOVEL PLASTIC SAMPLE KIT GAINS A DESIGN FOLLOWING continued on p. 8 Jörg Fuhrmann of Engel. 6 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 | www.plasticsengineering.orgINNOVATIVE AI-BASED SENSOR WINS COMPOSITES AWARD AVK, the Frankfurt, Germany-based Federation of Reinforced Plastics, named sensXPERT winner of its 2022 Innovation award for the Digital Mold process sensor system it developed. The company is part of Netzsch Process Intelligence GmbH, of Selb, Germany. (U.S. office is Netzsch Instruments North America, Burlington, Mass.) Digital Mold is described by sensXPERT as using artificial intelligence (AI) in an intelligent manufacturing technology for composites that enhances productivity in real time. Developed for use primarily with thermosets in injection molding, compression molding, reaction injection molding, resin transfer molding, hot pressing and vacuum infusion, as well as autoclave curing, Digital Mold combines advanced machine learning with real-time mold and material science data. Dielectric sensors characterize materials in sync with machine and mold operation to detect and control process factors for enhanced reliability (see related story on p. 26). The sensors are in contact with the entire mold and gather data from within the material being processed, not just from its surface. The information is then combined with material science data so that an engineer can be notified if injection pressure or any other process parameter needs modification. “We take over quality control for each part, in a non-destructive manner, during manufacturing, lowering the cost and effort required for post- process quality assurance,” says Dr. Alexander Chaloupka, founder and CTO of sensXPERT. “Our technology monitors how a material behaves during manufacturing, which allows us to react to deviations, whether from the material or from [an atmospheric] change such as a thunderstorm or other disturbance.” “One of the big challenges in implementing AI is gathering the necessary data,” adds Chaloupka. “We collect the data with our sensors and combine it with kinetic data for the material, which serves as input for our machine learning models.” Importantly, he remarks, “The real-time data feed the machine learning models, which helps retrain these models, effectively optimizing each machine.” Every machine has its own machine learning model that calculates the quality parameters of materials in real time. This means that if a customer has 10 identical injection molding machines producing the same parts with the same material under the same conditions, the same model is initially applied to each machine. However, the models will then use data from each machine to make adjustments that keep the processes on individual machines optimal. Thermosets in particular benefit from the sensXPERT technology since processing them depends on many parameters. “Thermosets can represent a big pain point,” Chaloupka notes. “Our customers sometimes don’t understand how these materials interact with storage or can be affected by [weather] changes or small temperature changes within the mold.” With the process monitoring technology, efficiency is enhanced in several ways. Customers have, for example, been able to cut cycle times while reducing scrap. “In the thermoset market, we’ve been able to reduce process temperature by 5°C while showing the material behavior doesn’t change much,” Chaloupka says. “This reduces energy consumption and thus cost.” The sensXPERT technology also combines simulation and real-time data to build a real-time simulation based on sensor data and infinite element analysis. This provides a detailed picture of what is happening in the mold as well as a big picture of the manufacturing process that together deliver increased transparency in processing. Users of Digital Mold technology include the Airbus Research and Technology Composite Team. Aircraft engineers use the sensors and AI capabilities with various materials in different process scenarios. Crucial parameters such as the degree of curing and glass transition temperature are recorded in accordance with highly sensitive state-of-the-art laboratory measurements. AVK honored the sensXPERT technology on Nov. 29, with the award in the category of “Processes and Procedures.” Chaloupka remarked then: “We will continue to work on making manufacturing processes more sustainable and efficient. This can only be achieved through a collaborative partner network, through which the knowledge that our customers need is digitalized and made available as a support tool.” AVK (Federation of Reinforced Plastics) honored sensXPERT with this award for its AI-based Digital Mold sensor technology. Photos courtesy of sensXPERT Dr. Alexander Chaloupka (second from right) and Nachiket Bapat (second from left) receive the AVK Award. www.plasticsengineering.org | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 | PLASTICS ENGINEERING | 7Next >