11. Nov 2018
Reifenhäuser invited to PLA-day
About 70 interested international visitors gathered on November 7th at extrusion equipment manufacturer Reifenhäuser's Troisdorf/Germany facility for their PLA-day.
Reifenhäuser is a 1500 employee, 500 million € turnover extrusion equipment manufacturer. CEO Ulrich Reifenhäuser opened the event with some remarks about the plastics industry in general. This industry still sees a tremendous growth, but plastics have two lives, he said: one in use (performance) and one after use (garbage). And the latter recently decreased the reputation of plastics, supported by a one-sided, un-logic and un-fair press.
But the world cannot live without plastics. That's why we must improve th eperformance, increase the recyclability and be flexible on materials.
PLA is such a material.
In different interesting presentations NatureWorks, Sukano, Illig and of course Reifenhäuser explained the opportunities and challenges of PLA. This included a review on the latest legislative developments on EU-level, but also everything about PLA, the possibilities that additivation offers and processing (not only) in thermoforming.
The day was rounded of by a presentation of a running 3-layer PLA sheet-extrusion line for thermofrming sheets to produce beverage cups.