German compounder TechnoCompound (Bad Sobernheim; www.technocompound.com) has invested EUR 5m during the past 18 months in expanding its production and storage capacities. As a result – among other things through the building of an additional compounding line – total production capacity has been increased by 17% to 60,000 t/y. The long-glass-fibre reinforced segment (LFT / LGF) has gone up by 4,500 t/y to 19,000 t/y. Expansion of the warehouse’s capacity to 22,000 m² was also part of the investment.

“These capacities offer us the basis for the planned volume increases in the strategic sales segments of polyolefin compounds, long and short glass-fibre-reinforced polypropylene compounds, engineering plastics PA 6, PBT and PET, and biobased compounds such as PLA,” said managing director, Jochen Eichstädt.

TechnoCompound, which is part of the Polymer-Group (Bad Sobernheim / Germany; www.polymer-gruppe.de) and has a workforce of around 80, now operates seven compounding lines. Sales most recently amounted to around EUR 60m, with the company supplying its products to plastics processors in Europe, Asia and North America.

Polymer-Group was created through the founding of Polymer-Chemie in 1973, an independent family business that modifies and compounds tailor-made plastics. Today, apart from TechnoCompound, the group comprises compounding companies Polymer-Chemie (Bad Sobernheim / Germany; www.polymer-chemie.de), Polymer-Chemie Rus (Moscow / Russia; www.polymerchemie.ru); Sun Alloys Europe (Bad Sobernheim / Germany; www.sa-e.de), PolyMIM (Bad Sobernheim / Germany; www.polymim.com) and SoBiCo (Bad Sobernheim / Germany; www.polymer-gruppe.de), and has a total of over 500 employees.

The subsidiary company Polyblend (Bad Sobernheim / Germany; www.polyblend.de) was divested at the end of last year to former partner and majority stakeholder Total (Paris / France; www.total.com – see Plasteurope.com of 10.12.2020).