Like the majority of producers, US PA 6 specialist AdvanSix (Parsippany, New Jersey; www.advansix.com) has reported significantly better figures than last year. For the third quarter, the company said EBITDA was over USD 75m (EUR 65m) on sales of USD 446.5m. This put earnings up 500% and turnover up 60% on Q3 2020. Compared to the same period in 2019, EBITDA tripled, and sales were 45% higher.

Polyamide production was responsible for 27% of turnover, the company said, and a further 18% came from activities related to the intermediate product, caprolactam. Other intermediates – including cyclohexanone, cumene, acetone and phenol – and fertilisers contributed the remainder. All products grew equally, the company said.

Erin Kane, CEO of the company, which was spun off five years ago from Honeywell, said the outlook for the further course of business is favourable. She suspects the constant demand for PA 6 and intermediate products in North America will continue.

At the same time, AdvanSix is preparing a range of post-industrial recycled PA. In addition to its “Aegis” materials and “Capran” brand biaxially-oriented polyamide (BOPA) films, the company plans to use types based entirely on recycled materials for applications that include food and pharmaceutical packaging and carpet fibres. The materials should be able to find use without recertification, which is hardly surprising as the company recovers unpolymerised caprolactam from its own production, feeds it back into the process, and then evaluates it according to the mass balance principle.