“The plastics industry has certainly had a very challenging 12 months. In September 2008 we really started to see the change and customers backing off from their demand.” These were Crew’s opening comments Oct. 1 at a briefing together with other executives at Sabic IP’s Rüsselsheim office.

But there has been a progressive rise in demand in the past seven months, he said, which poses the question of whether that increase just represents inventory rebuilding, he said. China has already shown clear signs of revival “with real demand picking up in the last three to four months — in all industries and not just inventory building — the result of domestic market stimulus by the Chinese government,” Crew added.

“It is really a mixed bag,” he said. “Some production that went to Spain and the [United Kingdom] earlier has been taken out again. But Europe is seen as coming out of the recession faster than the USA, while the USA has been preoccupied with bailing out the banking and other industries — more stabilization than stimulation.

“There has been a lot of uncertainty about when consumer spending will pick up, continuing as we go into the fourth quarter,” he said. “But the clunkers [car scrapping] and first-time home-buyer programs have helped, with building activity increasing again now.”

Despite uncertainty, Crew said “the fact is that as we grow our business, we can’t depend on gross domestic product. Innovation with customers is the way that we will grow.” Sabic IP is in a good position to do that, with its parent, Saudi Basic Industries Corp., showing a strong balance sheet despite “a lot of concern about the health of chemical companies” and with the group having a strong view of the Sabic IP engineering plastics business.

Innovations by Sabic IP will be supported with investment in both process technologies for customers and production capacity, including copolymerization of Lexan polycarbonate. Crew said $20 million has been allocated to the European headquarters in Bergen op Zoom, Netherlands, to develop some of these technologies.

During the briefing, Sabic IP automotive Vice President Greg Adams referred specifically to a project to make the first-ever plastic steering wheel with a new Lexan EXL 4016H glass-fiber-reinforced polycarbonate-siloxane copolymer.

Two new application development centers will be set up in the next 12 months — a Sabic group center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with integrated participation of Sabic IP, and consolidation in India of the Sabic center in Baroda and the Sabic IP center in Bangalore with a new group center in Bangalore for which designs are being finalized.

More than a one-third increase in compounding capacity has been achieved in Sabic IP’s plant in Nanching, China. In Cartagena, Spain, the finishing touches are being made to a new $300 million Ultem polyetherimide plant in that will serve local markets. Technology Vice President Tom Stanley described developments with co-polymers as “using existing assets with small modification, with speed to market faster than building a new plant.”

Similarly, the Ultem polyetherimide products are being extended with zxtem materials based on PEI made with alternative monomers and stretching heat resistance to more than 536° F for Extem UH. Stanley advised, however, that the two Extem series are presently being toll compounded, while the new high-performance plastics plant in Cartagena gets established.

Once the Indian research and technology center is completed in 2011, Stanley said, the Sabic group will have 10 integrated centers, including one in Geleen, Netherlands, and the new Bangalore and Shanghai centers. He also said Sabic IP still maintains contact with its former parent General Electric’s global research capabilities “for competences that we do not have.”

Aside from infrastructure, transport and energy markets, sustainability also is a focus at Sabic IP, Crew said, citing an example of an eco-friendly Motorola mobile phone made in a copolymer produced using PC recycled from 5-gallon water bottles. The phone was launched in January as the world’s first carbon-neutral mobile phone that has been carbon-free-certified by Carbonfund.org, Crew said. “The Motorola W223 Renew phone is a very hot seller in the marketplace,” Crew commented.

Metal replacement also is an important Sabic IP development area. The company is involved in developing new airline catering trolleys for LSG Skychef, replacing aluminum and other metal structures with flame-retardant, low-smoke Sabic IP products. On a Boeing 747, this application alone means saving 850kgs/year of fuel — a value of $60,000, Crew said.

Crew was supported by Tim O’Brien, Sabic’s vice president for the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa. O’Brien noted the use of a hydrolytically stabilized, halogen-free, Noryl-modified PPO for the airline catering trolley that has cut weight by 40 percent by consolidating parts by 34 percent.

Sabic IP’s new 308.6 million-pound-per-year(139,979-metric-ton-per-year) compounding plant in Genk, Belgium, is due to begin operating in the first quarter of 2010. It will include a CIC compounding innovation center with three lines for fast development and capacity for 242.5 million pounds (109,996 metric tons) of Sabic PP compound and 66 million pounds (29,937 metric tons) for Sabic’s Stamax LGF-reinforced PP. Claimed by Sabic to be the “biggest greenfield PP compounding plant ever built in Europe,” the Genk plant will be able to expand to more than 375 million pounds (170,097 metric tons) in the future.

The Genk plant will support mainly automotive developments. Adams illustrated how in the past bumpers have shifted from steel to a Xenoy PC/polybutylene terephthalate blend to polypropylene. Sabic now is better able to handle such shifts, Adams said, through “one automotive team providing one face for our automotive customers from PP to [engineering thermoplastics].”

Summing up the briefing, Crew said customers are looking for suppliers that provide more than just resins.

Sabic boasts 12,000 customers and holds 2,000 patents. Worldwide, it has 35 production plants and nine technical centers. Crew concluded his briefing by saying, “I believe the future of [the plastics] industry is very vibrant and it is capable of doing things we did in the past also in the future.”