Polymer business rewarded by Vince Cable for top KTP in the UK

Tuesday, January 24th 2012 6:48pm
By Malcolm Harold, Polymers

The best overall K.T.P project in the UK for 2011 was awarded to a partnership between Cherry Plastics Group, a Northern Ireland plastics recycling (Cherry Polymers) / extrusion company (Cherry Pipes) and the Polymer Processing Research Centre at Queen's University Belfast. The prize was presented by Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills at the Innovate 2011Conference in London. The prize was awarded for standard of the knowledge transfer from the academic partner to the company, the impact this has made on the business and the impact on the wider economy.

The partnership exceeded the initial aims of the project, which were to set up an appropriate quality management system, an in-house design function and a recycling division. In particular, the company experienced massive growth in turnover, from around 2.5 M to approx 9 M currently. Also a new recycling division was formed called Cherry Polymers. Technical input from the partnership was essential for the success of this venture, ensuring that the recycled compounds produced met or exceeded customer expectations. The new R&D focus also led Cherry Pipes to coordinate a European Commission R&D Framework 7 research programme which investigated a new approach to processing recycled polymers allowing the production of consistently high quality products.

This project involves the control of melt viscosity and material throughput on extrusion lines and it is hoped that the unit will be retrofit to existing equipment. The final product will lead to savings through higher line speeds, lower off spec percentages and lower energy use.

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Source: Polymers KTN

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