German engineering plastics producer Covestro (Leverkusen; www.covestro.com) has started construction on an expansion of its high-end polycarbonate production at Dormagen / Germany. The new co-extrusion lines planned to start up at the end of 2020 are part of a global widening of output in response to increasing demand. "With the expansion, we are strengthening the Dormagen site as a competence centre for speciality films," said managing board member Klaus Schäfer, who has responsibility for production and technology.

Covestro’s Dormagen hub houses production, a technical centre for film processing, a showroom and research laboratories. Its two other German competence centres, at Leverkusen and Bomlitz, specialise in film coating and thermoplastic elastomer films. Major applications for the multilayer PC flat films are in automotive interiors as well as medical devices and ID cards.

The planned investment of more than EUR 100m globally in the unquantified upgrade of PC film capacity also includes improvements to infrastructure and logistics to shorten delivery times. Altogether, the new plants are expected to create 100 jobs. The US expansion at South Deerfield, Massachusetts, has now been completed. At the beginning of 2019, Covestro began construction for a new PC films line at Map Ta Phut / Thailand – see Plasteurope.com of 04.01.2019. At Guangzhou, Guangdong / China, conversion of the co-extrusion line “is progressing,” the company said, with new capacities to be added subsequently.