MOSCOW (MRC) -- PolySol, which has headquarters in Desloge, Missouri, has opened a 2,780m2 (30,000 sq ft) facility in West Lothian, Scotland, for production of vinyl plastisol for the UK and European markets, as per Plasticsnewseurope.
Major customers in the UK, Spain and Turkey had asked PolySol to support them with an overseas operation, co-owner Jason Marler said.
"You've got to jump when the opportunity presents itself," Marler said in a phone interview with PRW parent publication Plastics News. "We've been fortunate after kicking a lot of stones over and working with a lot of customers."
Marler, an engineer who once was a plastisol buyer, owns the four-year-old company together with Joe Mueller, a chemist.
Following a near USD1m renovation project, the Scottish facility can process up to 2.7m kilograms of plastisol annually. The facility has five employees. The plant in Missouri can process about 9m kg per year. The first products were shipped from West Lothian in October.
Made from PVC resin, a plasticizer and a stabilizer, plastisol looks a lot like paint at room temperature. The mixture can take on a wide range of properties, while it is also UV resistant, flame retardant and also suitable for medical applications. It can also be coloured, clear, or even glow-in-the-dark.
Plastisol is applied to products in a variety of ways, such as dip coating for tool handles and outdoor furniture; dip moulding of caps, closures and seals; lamination of curtains, tents and artificial leather; rotational moulding of boat fenders and squeeze toys; and cast moulding of anti-fatigue mats.
Brexit has caused Marler some concern about deliveries from the UK to the EU, but he is optimistic that there will be a positive outcome.
"They keep postponing it. I wish they'd do something because the postponement is more of a detriment," Marler said. "If it happens and the UK breaks away, there will be some sort of duties to ship into the EU. The number that has been kicked around is like 6%."
"On one hand, you add 6% to cost, but on the other hand there's also a question of what happens to the British pound," he continued. "If it goes up 6%, then it's a wash. I don't think it will be the end of the world either way and we're going to make it work either way."
He added: “It's still better to ship from Scotland than the US to get into the European market."
VCM is a feedstock for the production of polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's overall PVC production reached 809,000 tonnes in the first ten months of 2019, up by 3% year on year. At the same time, not all Russian producers raised their output.
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