Polibasa Poliamidas Barbastro SA (E-22300 Barbastro) has commissioned new PA compounding capacity, as well as a new blending plant for TPE production. The company's capacity for the production of polyamide compounds as well as thermoplastic elastomers has been increased by about 25%. Polibasa, and its sister company the German compounder Bergmann Kunststoffwerk GmbH (D-76571 Gaggenau) are subsidiaries of M.A. Hanna Deutschland GmbH, Gaggenau.

With the new compounding plant Polibasa is able to produce 10,000 t/y of compounds as well as 3,500 t/y of TPEs. Its PA manufacturing capacity of 4,000 t/y is unchanged. In addition Bergmann has 23,000 t/y of compounding capacity at its Gaggenau plant. In 1995 Bergmann and Polibasa achieved a total turnover of DM 96m with 180 employees (65 of whom are based in Spain).

According to Oswin Weiser, Manager of M.A. Hanna Deutschland and Bergmann, the amount of material available from Polibasa was no longer sufficient to supply the requirements of the Spanish, Portuguese and North African markets, as well as the specialities required by customers of the German subsidiary. An additional reason for the capacity expansion is the continuing buoyant demand by the Spanish automobile industry for customer-specified engineering plastics grades.

READER SERVICE: Technical brochures of Bergmann: PIE-No. 38563 – Company profile and background information M.A. Hanna Co: PIE-No. 38542 (both in German).