Three years of accelerating growth and all the makings of a further increase in sales volume in the German market. At Fakuma 2018, RadiciGroup Performance Plastics stressed once again how Germany is central to the development of innovative projects, thanks to the collaboration with its German partners. Performance Plastics also confirmed its desire to continue investing to enhance its competitiveness in Germany and the rest of Europe.

“In the past months, RadiciGroup and our employees celebrated the twenty-year anniversary of our business activities in Germany”, recalled Davide Preti (picture above), regional sales area manager DACH, Nordic and Eastern European Countries of RadiciGroup Performance Plastics. “From 1998 to today, we have witnessed constant growth and the strengthening of our presence in the German market. In particular, during the last three years, our industrial site in Lüneburg has doubled its production capacity. The plants in Lüneburg and in Born, Holland, are our main production units providing high quality and service in central and northern Europe”.

“Today, we can affirm that we are one the most highly regarded players in the engineering plastics sector”, Preti continued. “In spite of the uncertainty clouding this entire sector at present, RadiciGroup is able to honour its commitments to its customers. The Group’s vertically integrated polyamide production, including its polymerization plants, its know-how acquired in over 35 years of experience in the plastics sector, and 8 compounding plants on 3 continents are the features the market recognizes as pluses”.

“Quality and punctuality are must-have characteristics if you want to do business in Germany for any long period of time’’, Preti concluded. “This market is the most important one in Europe for RadiciGroup Performance Plastics, not only in terms of sales volume and revenue, but also for the capacity to generate positive fallout in other geographical areas in Europe and elsewhere. This is an extremely important factor for a global Group like ours”.

Over 50% of RadiciGroup Performance Plastics’ products are used for applications in the automotive industry, which is the most important sector of all, in terms in quantity in the German and European markets. But the Group’s products also play a relevant role in fields such as electrical/electronics, technical/industrial and consumer goods.

“We achieved some of our most significant advances through a collaboration with our German customers“, stressed Erico Spini (picture below), global marketing manager of RadiciGroup Performance Plastics. “The developments were then shared within the Group, so as to become best practices. During the last ten years, our continuous investments in research and innovation have allowed us to widen our range of engineering plastics based on polyamide 6 and 6.6, above all, and other polymers. All of these specialty products, some of which were the results of targeted collaboration with customers, are now part of the RadiciGroup global product offering”.

But what new challenges is RadiciGroup Performance Plastics facing today?

“Obviously, in the automotive field”, said Spini. “We - like the entire sector - are working on electric and hybrid vehicles. As a supplier of raw materials, we are making an important contribution by developing flame resistant materials (Radiflam), for instance. We have made available to automakers innovative materials for battery covers, charging plugs and outlets, high-voltage connectors, as well as the battery cooling system (Radilon RG, D and DT, Aestus and Raditeck). In the field of E/E applications, the key word is safety. That is why, in the last few years, we have focused on halogen- and red phosphorus-free flame-retardant compounds to be used for all those components (such as, power distribution boards, industrial control units and household appliance parts) that are required to ensure safety, provide flame resistance properties, insulation and absence of substances toxic to human health”.

Under the consumer goods header”, Spini concluded, “we have products for extrusion, water management and the solar industry”.