Increased capacity for HDPE grades for gas and drinking water pipe has been started up by Borealis at its Schwechat plant in Austria. It is intended primarily to enable short delivery times and reliability of supply to Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. Borealis says the need to invest further in infrastructure with more efficient pipe networks for drinking water and gas is an important issue for Central and Eastern Europe, where ageing water pipe systems show leak rates of up to 40 per cent.
The BorSafe bimodal black compounds will be available in PE80 and PE100 grades. The are made using Borealis’ proprietary Borstar technology, a multi-modal process that allows tailoring of the pipe grade to achieve specific performance and processing benefits, such as high strength, low-sagging performance for production of thick wall pipes and high output potential.
The start up of production at Schwechat means that Borealis can source black HDPE pipe compounds from three locations, the others being Stenungsund in Sweden and Porvoo in Finland.
Source: britishplastics.co.uk
