August 15, 2001 - Nippon Paper Industries Co., Ltd., a company of the Nippon Unipac Holding Group, announced today the investment of 1 billion yen to refurbish facilities at the Iwakuni Plant. The upgraded facilities will increase the elimination of unwanted organic solvents produced in the manufacturing of its chlorinated polypropylene products and will enhance the plant's production capacity to meet the growing demand for chlorinated polypropylene pellets.

 

Nippon Paper Industries has thus far made a capital expenditure of about 200 million yen at the Iwakuni Plant to modify the chlorinated reaction process and thus lessen the unwanted by-product emissions. The company has successfully reduced the amount of organic solvent emissions by 80 percent in the process modification. At the same time, it has begun expanding the facility to increase the production of chlorinated polypropylene pellets by 30 percent. These pellets have become increasingly important in creating more environmentally friendly chlorinated polypropylene products based on them, including the non-toluene solution type and waterborne emulsion type products, neither of which involve any volatile organic compounds (VOC). The expansion, which began this February and is slated to finish in March next year, also features new facilities for the chlorinated reaction process with much reduced solvent emissions.

 

Chlorinated polypropylene with chlorine content of 20 percent to 40 percent is one of a few resins that provide excellent adhesion to polypropylene resin which has poor adhesion. Nippon Paper Industries offers the SUPERCHLON series, a wide range of chlorinated polypropylene products in high and low chlorine content. It is widely used as coatings and adhesives, including as a primer coat for automobile bumpers and as a binder of polypropylene printing ink.

 

Currently many of the SUPERCHLON products come in toluene solution, but the company expects the demand for non-toluene solution types and waterborne emulsion types to continue to increase in response to increasing concerns about the environment. The pellet type, the solid form without solvent, is the basis for the solvent and emulsion types, and has been showing strong sales in Europe, the U.S. and Asia. The company's recent moves for enhanced production capacity and improvements in facilities will meet this greater demand and will be kinder to the environment.