Insulation industry news from Global Insulation

India: Wacker Metroark Chemicals has officially opened a 6000t/day hydrosilylation plant for manufacturing functional silicone fluids at Amtala near Kolkata. The plant cost Euro6m. The expansion is Wacker’s response to growing regional demand for specialty silicones for use in the textile, personal care, rigid and flexible polyurethane foam and agrochemical sectors. Polyurethane foams produce at the unit will be used to make insulation materials and other products.

“Our new hydrosilylation plant enables us to address promising new markets where we haven’t been represented in India and Southeast Asia until now – for example the market for silicone functional fluids with its many sales opportunities,” said Soumitra Mukherjee, Managing Director of Wacker Metroark Chemicals.

Wacker Metroark Chemicals is a joint venture between Germany’s Wacker and Metroark. The company is responsible for all marketing and sales activities in the India relating to Wacker silicones. Wacker owns a 51% share in the joint venture, which was set up in 1998.

UK: Knauf Insulation and Veolia have officially opened a Euro11m glass-recycling unit at Knauf’s St Helens mineral wool plant. The unit will be able to recycle over 60,000t/yr of used glass that will then be used as a glass cullet source for glass mineral wool production.

"We have been using recycled glass in our manufacturing process for some time already. As well as securing our glass supply, the quality and consistency that we are getting now from the new facility will enable us to increase further the percentage of glass cullet we use in the manufacture of our glass mineral wool insulation solutions, taking us one step further in our sustainability journey,” said John Sinfield, Managing Director at Knauf Insulation Northern Europe.

Veolia's unit sorts and separates glass to produce pure glass cullet. Machinery at the unit includes vibrating screens for size sorting, magnets to extract ferrous materials and eddy current separators for non-ferrous materials. The new facility enables Knauf Insulation to secure its glass supply and maximise the use of recycled materials instead of using virgin minerals. The closeness of the new unit to the St Helens plant is also expected to save around 600,000km of road journeys. Glass mineral wool products from the plant contain up to 80% recycled materials, the vast majority of which now comes from the glass cullet supplied by Veolia. The new recycling unit has also created 18 jobs.

Germany/Poland: Rockwool plans to build new production lines at its stone wool insulation plants at Malkinia in Poland and Neuburg in Germany. The expansions are intended to target demand in new builds and renovation for non-combustible stone wool insulation, particularly in the external wall system and flat roof insulation segments. The upgrade work at Malkinia also includes improved environmental measures.

“Demand for stone wool insulation is expected to grow in key European markets, and expanding existing facilities lets us add capacity relatively quickly. We are also making good progress on multiple initiatives to optimise and upgrade other of our manufacturing facilities to boost output and reinforce our market-leading position,” said Rockwool Group chief executive officer (CEO) Jens Birgersson.

The new production capacity is scheduled to come on line in the second quarter of 2019 in Poland the second quarter of 2020 in Germany. The cost of the investment is approximately Euro175m. The insulation producer is also planning to increase production capacity at other plants through modifications to equipment and workflow to eliminate bottlenecks.

Australia: Kingspan Insulation has implemented an integrated management system (IMS) into insulation plant in Somerton. The system has been adopted to comply with ISO 9001, 14001, 45001 and 50001. The site was audited by SAI Global in July 2017 where it received certification as compliant to all four targeted ISO standards.

China: Luyang Energy-Saving Materials plans to spend US$19m on a new mineral wool production line. The upgrade will increase its production capacity to 80,000t/yr from 50,000t/yr, according to Reuters.

US: Germany’s BASF plans to start building a methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) synthesis unit at its Verbund plant in Geismar, Louisiana in the second quarter of 2018. Planning and engineering for the new unit started in 2016 and were recently completed. The upgrade is expected to double the company’s MDI production capacity to nearly 0.6Mt/yr from 0.3Mt/yr. The investment is planned to support the growth of BASF’s North American business.

France: Saint-Gobain plans to build a new glass wool production line at its Isover branded plant at Chemillé near Angers. The line is scheduled to start production in mid-2019. It is being built to meet rising demand in the French market for roof insulation products.

In addition, Saint-Gobain is planning to open new production lines at its plants in Azuqueca near Madrid in Spain and Vidalengo near Milan in Italy. These lines will open in spring and autumn 2018 respectively. Altogether Saint-Gobain has invested Euro45m in the upgrades with the majority placed in Chemillé.

Hungary: Building materials producer Masterplast has been awarded a Euro0.8m grant from the government for its foam insulation plant at Kal. The grant will be used as part of a Euro1.6m upgrade at the site, according to the MTI-Eco news agency.

China: BASF has blamed ‘force majeure’ for a disruption to the production of methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) at its Chongqing plant due to a supply shortage of natural gas from its syngas supplier. BASF says it is unable to determine when it will be able to resume production as its syngas supplier has been unable to tell it when the input will be restored. The German-headquartered chemical multinational uses MDI to manufacture a number of products including insulation.

US: Michael Darr has been appointed as the operations manager of Firestone Building Products’ plant in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He previously worked as the plant manager for Bridgestone’s tyre plant in Wilson, North Carolina, according to the Wilson Daily Times newspaper. Firestone, a subsidiary of Bridgestone, purchased Gaco Western, a producer of insulation and roofing products, in April 2017 including the Waukesha site.