Ineos (Lyndhurst / UK; www.ineos.com) has resumed operations at its swing plant for the production of HDPE and LLDPE, located in Grangemouth / UK.

However, in response to a query by PIE, a company spokesman said that force majeure – announced in January 2010 – remained in place.

Bioplastics producer Cereplast (El Segundo, California / USA; www.cereplast.com) has commenced production at its new plant in Seymour, Indiana / USA. The company said the plant will be capable of producing 80m pounds/year (36,300 tonnes/year) of bioplastic resin when operating at full capacity.

Frederic Scheer, chairman and CEO of Cereplast, said the start-up is part of the company’s plans to streamline its operations. “The Indiana plant will allow us to significantly reduce our costs across the board as compared to our operations in California and focus on our core strengths: the development and marketing of our bio-plastic resins,” he stated.

The UK’s leading PE film producer British Polythene Industries (Greenock, Scotland / UK; www.bpipoly.com) has posted a pretax profit of GBP 11.8m (EUR 13.0m) in the year to 31 December 2009. This is an increase of over 200% compared to 2008 (GBP 3.9m) and comes despite a 11.6% fall in sales to GBP 425m.

Operating profit before restructuring costs increased 50% to GBP 19m and net borrowings declined by GBP 23.8m to GBP 52.2m. Volumes in 2009 declined to 275,000 t (305,000 t in 2008), but BPI notes that this figure can be misleading as many packaging customers are specifying thinner and stronger PE films.

The UK Packaging and Films Association (PAFA, Nottingham; www.pafa.co.uk) has warned that the UK government risks setting unachievable plastic recycling targets before ensuring there is the infrastructure in place to make recycling more efficient in the country.

Meanwhile, PAFA welcomed the statement by Liz Goodwin, CEO of the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP, Banbury / UK; www.wrap.org.uk) that that “it’s no longer enough to look at the impact of packaging alone”, as the targets for the second stage of Courtauld Commitment, which is designed minimise resource usage in the grocery sector to reduce the climate change impacts, were announced.

Swiss plastics group Ems-Grivory (Domat; www.emsgrivory.com) is to raise the prices of its PA-based injection moulding materials in Europe by 5%.

The increases apply to “Grilamid” TR, “Grivory” GV/HT and “Grilon” A, B and TS grades and take effect from 1 April 2010.

Arkema (Colombes / France; www.arkema.com) has added new masterbatches to its “Graphistrength” line of carbon nanotube products and developed a new range of “Nanostrength” acrylic block copolymers. The Graphistrength masterbatches include a universal grade for various thermoplastics, new grades for elastomers and solid concentrates for liquid epoxy and aqueous solutions.

Arkema said the Nanostrength block copolymers self-assemble or ‘nanostructure’ at the molecular level, bringing superior mechanical strength without losing any of the important properties of the matrix material.