This is a success story of a special kind: in 1996, Ashland Plastics Europe (HQ: Lozenberg 23, B-1932 Zaventem) took over the entire small-distributor marketing activities for polyolefins in Europe from Borealis AS (HQ: DK-2800 Lyngby), starting with approx. 80,000 t. Juri Bercovitz, Marketing Manager for Germany, Switzerland and Austria, told Plasteurope.com that, for 1999, the company was already aiming for a volume of 160,000 t. The main areas of activity, he said, were the marketing of PP and PE for injection moulding and extrusion, and the support of new technical applications for mediumsized plastics converters. The very close cooperation between Borealis and Ashland Plastics guaranteed the customers good technical support in all questions of plastics processing. In addition to the PP and PE commodities, Ashland also supplies specialty plastics such as the highly flexible material “Borflex” (EMA), cable materials, powders for rotational moulding and the “Daplen” product range from the former company, PCD.

Ashland Plastics is one of the biggest plastics distributors in Europe with sales offices and warehouses in 17 countries. With a workforce of 260, worldwide plastics sales total around USD 1bn. The General Polymers Division of Ashland Chemical is the biggest independent plastics distributor in the United States. Its most recent success is the contract it concluded for all Bayer plastics in the US three months ago.

Prospectus and overview of Ashland´s product range “Ihr starker Partner für Kunststoffe” (German), PIE-No. 44011 (Delivery range brochure Ashland Chemical (English): PIE-No. 44012.