Engineering Plastics: Producing multi-coloured kayaks with reduced energy/cycle time

Rotational moulding is a preferred process to produce large hollow articles like tanks for water or agrochemicals. In addition, this process is widely used for custom mouldings such as for marine sports, fish tubs and defence applications, owing to greater design flexibility and cost advantage. However, potential challenges with rotational moulding are energy consumption and long cycle times.

Reinhardt Teknik, a global rotomoulding machine OEM with a plant in India operating under guidance of Reinhardt GmbH, Germany, teamed up with Greenage Industries, a South Asian compounder and exporter for rotomoulding powders located in India, with the goal of creating a durable, tough kayak that was also aesthetically appealing and produced efficiently using less energy.

Ravi Kadivar, Managing Director, Greenage Industries notes, “Integrating ExxonMobil’s metallocene LLDPE into our rotomoulding formulations unlocked a new level of performance and versatility. Its high uniform molecular architecture ensures smoother extrusion, superior low-temperature ARM impact and a consistently wide processing window, critical for maintaining quality across varied rotomoulding conditions.“

The solution applied is ExxonMobil’s Exceed metallocene PE grades. Leveraging the material expertise of ExxonMobil Signature Polymers, Greenage developed a compounded coloured powder with machine and processing expertise from Reinhardt Teknik.

Following initial discussions, Exceed Tough m 4536 was chosen as the high-performance resin for the application. Exceed Tough performance PE offered ageing and stress crack performance with enhanced toughness, providing potential cycle time reduction over the conventional compounded ZN C6LL grade.

Rustom Patell from Reinhardt Teknik, said, “ExxonMobil’s latest rotomoulding metallocene LLDPE demonstrates excellent heat stability at elevated temperatures. Designed for rotomoulding, this grade offers a broad processing window and cycle reduction possibilities over conventional PE, which is of great value to rotomoulders. It exhibits excellent ARM impact performance, critical in applications like kayaks.”

Potential benefits of Exceed Tough high-performance PE resin include:

PE pet food pouch designed for recyclability

Machine direction-oriented (MDO) PE films can exhibit improved mechanical, barrier and optical properties but implementing MDO technology requires investment in specialised equipment, which can be a significant upfront cost.

Italian machinery maker Bandera partnered with ExxonMobil Signature Polymers to create PE substrate films with conventional blown film extrusion.

“Extrusion technology has come a long way”, said Diego Castiglioni, Technical Director, Bandera. “Our technology contributes to extreme flexibility and outstanding technical properties; our lines are suitable for PE substrate like films without MDO for mono-material solution.”

The challenge was to develop a PE mono-material pet food pouch, designed for recyclability using a substrate film providing stiffness and optics, meeting converting requirements for printing and lamination.

The substrate film was made on a conventional Bandera blown film extrusion line, resulting in good optical properties, high stiffness and dimensional stability at elevated temperatures, which are important requirements for printing and lamination. As sealant film for this PE pet food pouch, an EVOH-containing film was made on a Bandera Barrier Flex extrusion line using an Exxtra Seal enhanced polymer, ensuring a broad sealing window.

The partners created a solution using conventional blown film extrusion technology, for a stiff high clarity substrate film that can be used for PE mono-material pouch applications designed for recyclability.

Contributing to the creation of the mono-PE pet food pouch were:

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