Steve Henderson has been appointed President of Dow Automotive Systems, replacing Peter Sykes who assumed the role of President Greater China for the holding company Dow Chemical. In addition, Sykes also served as President Japan & Korea for Dow based in Tokyo, Japan. He will relinquish this responsibility. Henderson will be responsible for the global profit and loss, business strategy and organisational health of the automotive division.

Hans Zweifel, Ralph-Dieter Maier, Michael Schiller (eds.), Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich, 6th ed., 2009, 1,230 p., 300 fig., hardback, ISBN 978-3-446-40801-2, EUR 199.90

Anil K. Bhowmick (ed.), CRC Press – Taylor & Francis Group, Boca Raton, 2008, 1,090 p., hardback, ISBN 978-0-8493-7317-6, USD 189.95

So. F. Ter Spa has launched a new range of antibacterial compounds characterised by high effectiveness and prolonged effect, according to the norm DIN EN ISO 846.

Plasmatreat has demonstrated at Fakuma how normally incompatible components in the injection moulding process can be joined by the use of Openair plasma-technology.

In the production of elastomer moulding products approximately 30 % of the entire energy is used for driving the machine. Even though the share of energy costs compared to the overall production costs of the products is relatively low, it is still possible to achieve considerable savings especially in the area of the drive by the use of an intelligent system.

Zeon has extended its TPE product line with the addition of Zeotherm 110-70B and 131-90B. Both grades have been introduced at IRC 2009.

Kraton Polymers LLC recently commercialised the Nexar polymer product family.

A new market study presented by Freedonia presents industry forecasts for the international TPE markets. According to the study world demand for thermoplastic elastomers is forecast to rise 5.9 % per year through 2013 to 4.75 million tonnes.

The VTC TPE Group has recently launched Dryflex, a new family of TPO compounds based on Infuse olefin block copolymers from Dow.