Demand for fillers and reinforcements touches 3 bln lb in North America

14-Jun-06

The past decade has witnessed a robust growth in the use of chemically modified fillers and reinforcements for plastics in North America, as more performance fillers and reinforcements find use in thermoplastics. Demand has touched a figure estimated at 3 billion lb in 2005, as per a study by Principia. Demand for products treated with coupling agents and dispersion aids has experienced growth of over 9% pa over the past decade. Reinforcements, particularly natural fibers, including wood flour and agricultural fibers have grown 20% pa in composite building products and automotive components. Chemicals have been used to modify mineral fillers and fiber reinforcements for plastics to reduce agglomeration of fine particle size fillers and improve dispersion in plastic compounds and to couple the filler or fiber to the polymer, thus allowing increased loading and improved performance. Dispersion properties have become more important in recent years as mineral filler producers continue to develop finer particle size products. Generally speaking, the need for dispersion treatments increases exponentially when filler particle size falls below 3 microns. Calcium carbonate is the major filler employing dispersion aid treatments. Other fillers available in sub-micron size are nanoclays, talc, wollastonite and silica In 2005, an estimated 1.5 billion lb of surface-modified minerals and another 1.4 billion lb of treated reinforcements were consumed in plastics applications in North America. Leading treated fillers include alumina hydrate, calcium carbonate, kaolin, mica, talc, and wollastonite. Fiberglass dominates in reinforcements, but natural fibers including wood flour, flax, kenaf, are rapidly growing in use. Silanes and maleated polyolefins are the major coupling agent chemicals used to treated fillers and reinforcements. Stearates are the dominate dispersion treatment chemical. In 2005, the combined use of these chemicals with minerals and reinforcements in plastics exceeded US$70 million. The forces driving demand for surface-treated minerals and fibers in plastics are the trend to finer particle size filler minerals, growth in demand for filled and reinforced polypropylene in automotive and other end uses, rising resin prices, growth in demand for wood-plastic-composite products. Chemically modified fillers and reinforcements in plastics are expected to grow to almost 4 billion lb in 2010.