MOSCOW (MRC) -- Berry Global Group (Evansville, Indiana) says it is investing in a new melt-blown nonwovens production line in the UK that will supply fabric to be used in the manufacture of protective face masks. No investment figure has been given, reported Chemweek.
The production line will be outfitted with Berry’s proprietary charging technology at one of the company’s UK facilities to increase capacity for the production of European-standard Type IIR and N99-equivalent FFP3 masks, it says. The company is collaborating with The Medicom Group, which has a long-term contractual agreement with the UK government to supply the masks and is scheduled to open a new UK-based production facility later this year.
The investments in the new production facilities have been enabled through a long-term contractual commitment by the UK government, says Berry. “This move highlights the focus governments are placing on securing a supply chain that helps ensure a local supply of personal protective equipment,” it says.
Berry said in May it was expanding its melt-blown nonwovens production capacity in Berlin, Germany, to help meet the surge in demand for protective face masks due to COVID-19, while the previous month it also said it was accelerating investment in another production line at Biesheim, France, for the supply of high-efficiency filtration media for masks.
As MRC wrote before, in November 2019, Berry Global Group announced a collaboration with SABIC to drive the innovation and use of polyolefin resins made from chemical recycling.
We remind that in the first week of September 2019, SABIC Europe, an affiliate of SABIC, started maintenance work at its cracker No.3 at Geleen site in the Netherlands. The planned maintenance is slated to last around 2 months. The company operates two steam crackers in Geleen which are capable of producing 1,250,000 tons/year of ethylene and 675,000 tons/year of propylene in total.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 721,290 tonnes in the first four month of 2020, up by 4% year on year. Low density polyethylene (LDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments grew partially because of the increased capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market totalled 347,440 tonnes in January-April 2020 (calculated by the formula production minus export plus import). Supply exclusively of PP random copolymer increased.
MRC