The Renolit Composites business unit has added a new production line to the APPL GOR Plastics India plant for customers in India and the Asia Pacific region. The new extrusion line, located in Pune, near Mumbai, is the first facility outside of Europe able to produce clean, safe Renolit Tecnogor thermoformable sheets and rolls, along with other lightweight, 100% recyclable, sustainable products in the Renolit Composites range.
The installation of the new line in Pune was celebrated at the official inauguration event earlier in the year attended by COO Dr. Axel Bruder from the Renolit Group Executive Board, CEO Fabrizio Carello and CFO Mauro Piccolo from Renolit Gor., and Rahul Chivate, general manager of APPL GOR Plastics India.
A key feature of the new production line design is the inclusion of Renolit’s patented extrusion processing technology for manufacturing the innovative, new, 100% recyclable, Renolit Tecnogor glass fibre (GF) reinforced, PP based, lightweight thermoplastic composite material. High quality 3D trim parts can be consistently thermoformed in a high productivity ‘glue free’ one-step-process, which reduces production costs.
Due to the production process, Renolit Tecnogor has stiffness and impact performance. The patented fibre embedding extrusion technique also makes Renolit Tecnogor a clean, very safe material to use on the shop floor and handle post moulding.
This is because all the glass fibres are completely encapsulated in the PP polymer matrix during extrusion, so there are no free floating fibres in the air during lay up or exposed on the moulded part surface. This will be a major safety benefit to customers in the Indian market, which currently mainly uses glass fiber mats to produce composite moulded parts.
Technical director of RENOLIT COMPOSITES Adriano Odino, who headed up the installation project commented: “The local engineering team did a great job installing and commissioning the new line and the highly skilled blue collar workforce quickly learnt how to efficiently produce all the grades that the new line can extrude to RENOLIT’s stringent specifications and quality assurance standards. The new line in Pune is now fully operational and open for business.”
