November 2019

The world’s third-largest producer of flexible packaging, Constantia Flexibles (Vienna, Austria), opens the world’s first plant designed to produce more sustainable and recyclable flexible packaging only, in India. Production focus at the plant lies on the more environmentally friendly packaging family EcoLam. The official opening will take place on November 20 in Ahmedabad.

These new formulations utilise between 40 and 50 per cent bio-renewable content derived from sugarcane and offer hardness levels and performance comparable to standard TPEs.

This summer, the Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS; Washington, DC) published the latest edition in its Plastics Market Watch series—Watching: Plastics Contributions to Healthcare. Here are five insights on the fundamental role that plastics play within the healthcare ecosystem pulled from the report’s executive summary.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has proposed banning single-use plastic, his spokesman said on Thursday (Nov 7), which could provide the impetus needed for the Congress of one of the world’s top plastic polluters to pass environment protection laws. The Philippines, which ranks among the world’s worst ocean polluters, has a law on solid waste but it is poorly enforced and it does not regulate packaging manufacturing.

Medtech startup BellaSeno (Leipzig, Germany), which has developed a 3D-printed resorbable scaffold for breast-implant procedures, has signed an agreement with materials supplier Evonik (Essen, Germany) for the long-term use of its Resomer bioresorbable polymer.
The Senella breast scaffold product, which is designed to be implanted after breast reconstruction, augmentation or revision surgery, progressively resorbs as it is replaced by the formation of natural breast tissue.

We are approaching the halfway mark of the Made in China 2025 initiative. Announced in 2015, the 10-year-plan’s goal is to turn the modern-day “workshop of the world” into an advanced manufacturing powerhouse. Do Chinese manufacturers see 3D printing as an essential enabling technology in this transition, wondered Materialise, the 3D printing technology company based in Leuven, Belgium. It conducted a survey to find out, and the results reveal some ambivalence.

K 2019 was an unqualified success. The plastics and rubber trade show in Düsseldorf, Germany, from Oct. 16 to 23 attracted approximately 225,000 visitors from 165 countries, according to Messe Düsseldorf. They ogled stunning displays from the likes of Sabic and Reifenhäuser and kicked some tires as they pondered purchasing new plastics processing equipment.