K - The World’s No. I Trade Fair for Plastics and Rubber

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K - The World’s No. I Trade Fair for Plastics and Rubber Welcome to K – The World's No.1 Trade fair and the world's leading and most important trade fair for the global plastics and rubber industry.
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A proprietary technology reaching full industrial scale for the first time worldwide is a milestone worth tracking for t...
16/10/2026

A proprietary technology reaching full industrial scale for the first time worldwide is a milestone worth tracking for the methacrylate industry.

Röhm's Bay City, Texas plant is now operating its LiMA technology at full industrial scale - the first time this process has run at this level anywhere in the world. The facility is also the first C2-based MMA production plant in North America, with an annual production capacity of 250,000 tons of methyl methacrylate (MMA).

Compared with conventional MMA production, LiMA technology reduces energy and water consumption and lowers carbon dioxide emissions by up to 42%. Surrounding constructed wetlands support a near-closed water cycle for process and cooling water treatment, and a daily-updated digital twin supports predictive maintenance and long-term reliability. The plant also strengthens regional supply security for North American customers, backed by an investment of around USD 1.6 billion (approx. EUR 1.5 billion) from Advent International to bring the technology - originally developed in Germany - to industrial scale in the US.

"As the only global producer of both methyl methacrylate and polymethyl methacrylate with production sites in the major regions of Europe, Asia, and North America, we are uniquely positioned to serve our customers worldwide - reliably, locally, and with leading technology," says Hans Bohnen, CEO of Röhm.

The project shows how a technology transfer from lab to full industrial scale can directly translate into measurable efficiency and emissions gains across an entire production process - not just a single component of it. 🏭 ⚙️

Renewable energy is moving from ambition to daily operations in engineering plastics production.As plastics processors f...
15/10/2026

Renewable energy is moving from ambition to daily operations in engineering plastics production.

As plastics processors face growing pressure to cut emissions across their supply chains - particularly Scope 3.1 purchased goods and services under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) - BASF's Green Energy Manufacturing approach offers a concrete answer: fossil energy carriers such as natural gas are replaced with renewable electricity, steam and heat throughout chemical production, as a drop-in solution that requires no changes to existing processes or product quality. Resulting products reach a cradle-to-gate carbon footprint at least 10% lower than the comparable conventional product, calculated to ISO 14067:2018 and reviewed by TÜV Rheinland.

Two industry cases illustrate the effect at scale. Eaton has begun integrating reduced-carbon-footprint materials at its manufacturing facility in Schrems, Austria, as part of its supplier collaboration strategy. Bosch expects the 2026 volume of a reduced-footprint BASF product it sources to cut its carbon footprint by roughly 1,000 metric tonnes of CO₂ equivalents - without extensive process changes.

"As a long-standing supplier in the field of thermoplastics, BASF ensures high standards of quality and innovation for our products. In particular, their global presence and the use of carbon-reduced materials make a significant contribution to our competitiveness," says Selina Schober, Global Supplier Key Account Manager, Robert Bosch GmbH.

Across BASF's Engineering Plastics customer base, comparable measures already reduced carbon footprints by around 2,000 metric tonnes in 2025 alone.

The takeaway: measurable CO₂ reduction and unchanged manufacturing efficiency are not mutually exclusive - they're increasingly delivered through the same solution.

Cases like this reflect the practical, technology-driven side of the plastics industry's transformation that the global K community continues to follow across the value chain. 🏭 ♻️

13/10/2026

⚙️ 75 Jahre Hochleistungskunststoffe und ein Familienunternehmen in vierter Generation.

Robert Höhner, Geschäftsführer von Murtfeld, stellt das Unternehmen vor, welches er heute in vierter Generation führt — gegründet von seinem Urgroßvater vor fast 75 Jahren. Murtfeldt stellt technische Hochleistungskunststoffe her und verarbeitet Compounds zu fertigen Bauteilen, die jährlich rund 10.000 Kunden in Maschinen und Anlagen weltweit erreichen. Überall dort, wo Reibung entsteht, Verschleiß reduziert werden muss oder Maschinen effizienter laufen sollen, kommen diese Materialien zum Einsatz.

Für Murtfeldt ist die K alle drei Jahre ein absolutes Pflichtereignis – denn hier kommt die gesamte Branche aus aller Welt zusammen. Es ist der Ort, an dem Verbindungen entstehen, die anderswo kaum möglich wären, oder wie Robert Höhner selbst sagt:

„Wir knüpfen hier Kontakte, die wir sonst niemals in Deutschland finden würden."

Und genau dafür steht die K: Sie bringt die globale Kunststoff- und Kautschuk-Community an einem Ort zusammen. 🙌

The countdown to PLASTFOCUS 2027 has begun. 🌍From 2027 onwards, PLASTFOCUS will be jointly organised by Messe Düsseldorf...
12/10/2026

The countdown to PLASTFOCUS 2027 has begun. 🌍

From 2027 onwards, PLASTFOCUS will be jointly organised by Messe Düsseldorf India and PMMAI for the first time. The Curtain Raiser in Ahmedabad brought together industry leaders, partners and stakeholders to unveil the vision for the event, taking place from 23 to 26 June 2027 at BIEC in Bengaluru. Co-owned by both partners, PLASTFOCUS now becomes part of the global K Alliance.

Among those on site in Ahmedabad: Tushar Parikh, Satish Godase, Sunil Jain, Sandeep Engineer, Anu Chaudhary, Ajay Kumar Gulati, Marius Berlemann, Thomas Franken and Lars Wismer.

“India is one of the most important future markets for our sector. The industry is growing, domestic demand is rising, investment in manufacturing continues, and Indian companies are becoming increasingly visible internationally”, said Marius Berlemann, Chief Operating Officer at Messe Düsseldorf. “We are proud to welcome PLASTFOCUS into the K Alliance.”

The K Alliance connects K in Düsseldorf with regional platforms in key growth markets worldwide. For PLASTFOCUS, that means bringing the strength of the Indian market together with the international reach of K - a connection already visible in Düsseldorf, where India ranks among the most strongly represented visitor countries.

The scale of the next edition reflects that ambition: more than 70,000 sqm of gross exhibition space, over 1,000 exhibitors, participation from more than 20 countries and over 120,000 expected visitors. 🤝

📍 BIEC, Bengaluru
📅 23 to 26 June 2027

08/10/2026

Full halls, packed schedules, conversations in every aisle - exactly one year ago, the global plastics and rubber community came together in Düsseldorf. 🎥

K 2025 brought the entire value chain into one place - raw materials, processing technologies, machinery, digital production and recycling solutions - alongside the people who move the industry forward: manufacturers, technology providers, researchers, brand owners, young professionals and policy makers.

Looking back at these impressions, what stands out is not a single technology or announcement. It is the density of exchange: conversations across halls, across disciplines, across markets and across continents, all pointing in the same direction - how the industry designs, produces and recovers materials in the years ahead.

Those conversations did not end when the halls closed. They continue in projects, partnerships and investment decisions that are taking shape across the industry right now.

A look back at K 2025 - and a reminder of why the global industry meets in Düsseldorf. 🤝
What moment from K 2025 has stayed with you?

Sometimes the smartest move in materials science is cutting something out - not adding something new. 🔬LANXESS has launc...
07/10/2026

Sometimes the smartest move in materials science is cutting something out - not adding something new. 🔬

LANXESS has launched Disflamoll® Advance, a new platform for plasticizing flame retardants built around an extremely low triphenyl phosphate (TPP) content of less than 0.1 percent. The idea is simple in principle but hard in practice: keep the flame retardancy and performance manufacturers already rely on, while getting ahead of a regulatory landscape that keeps tightening.

The first product from the platform, Disflamoll® Advance OT, is built specifically for polar polymer systems - flexible PVC used in flooring, tarpaulins and synthetic leather, insulation foams, thermoplastic polyurethanes, synthetic rubbers and cellulose esters. So this isn't a niche material; it touches a wide slice of everyday plastic applications.

Beyond the low TPP content, it maintains strong flame retardancy and smoke suppression, while also helping reduce or eliminate antimony trioxide in formulations and improving processing efficiency along the way. And thanks to the use of renewable energy and raw materials in its production, the carbon footprint can run up to 40 percent lower than conventional alternatives.
Heiko Tebbe, Head of Application Development for Polymer Additives at LANXESS, sums up the logic well: the platform is designed to bring regulatory preparedness, technical performance and sustainability together in one flexible portfolio - built to handle not just today's requirements, but whatever comes next.

More products are already planned as the platform expands. A good reminder that regulatory pressure, done right, tends to push materials science forward rather than just adding compliance overhead. ⚙️

What if the wing structure of a plane could also store its energy - without adding a single gram of weight? ✈️That's the...
06/10/2026

What if the wing structure of a plane could also store its energy - without adding a single gram of weight? ✈️

That's the idea behind RE-CELL, a project developing structural batteries and supercapacitors made from recycled carbon fibre. Coordinated by SOFITEC, with AIMPLAS and I2CON as partners, the concept flips how we usually think about batteries in aviation: instead of adding a separate energy storage system, the aircraft component itself does both jobs - structural support and energy storage - at once.

Esteban Castro, R&D Engineer at SOFITEC, puts the core challenge well: the hard part of aviation electrification isn't just storing more energy, it's doing so without a weight penalty. Structural batteries solve that by letting one component do two things simultaneously.

What makes this particularly interesting is the material choice. Rather than starting from virgin carbon fibre, RE-CELL is built on recycled carbon fibre - giving a resource that's typically hard to reuse a genuine second life in one of the most demanding applications imaginable. Fernando Ramos, researcher in Sustainable and Future Mobility at AIMPLAS, frames it as looking for materials that are not just more efficient, but more sustainable too.

Getting there means solving problems that have kept structural batteries mostly theoretical until now - functional solid electrolytes, the natural variability of recycled fibres, and the tricky combination of mechanical and electrochemical behavior in one material. Florin Ardelean, researcher at I2CON, points out that one of the project's real advances is studying ionic conduction and mechanical behavior together, rather than separately as has typically been the case.

The initial target applications are deliberately modest - things like cabin lighting systems - laying the groundwork before eventually working toward more demanding uses. The project will culminate in a full-scale demonstrator integrated into a component linked to an aircraft's landing gear, testing the technology under real-world conditions.

RE-CELL is funded through Spain's 2023 Public-Private Partnership programme, backed by the Spanish State Research Agency and co-funded by the EU. A compelling glimpse into where composite materials and circular economy thinking are heading in aerospace. 🌍

✈️ What if a plane's wing structure could also store its energy — without adding a single gram of weight?That's RE-CELL:...
06/10/2026

✈️ What if a plane's wing structure could also store its energy — without adding a single gram of weight?

That's RE-CELL: structural batteries and supercapacitors made from recycled carbon fibre. Coordinated by SOFITEC, with AIMPLAS and I2CON as partners. 🔬

Instead of adding a separate battery, the aircraft component does both jobs at once — structure and energy storage. The twist: it's built on recycled carbon fibre, not virgin material. A resource that's typically hard to reuse gets a genuine second life. ♻️

First target: cabin lighting. Endgame: a full-scale demonstrator tested on aircraft landing gear.
Composite materials and circular economy thinking — this is where aerospace is heading. 🌍

No two batches of recycled plastic look quite the same - and that's exactly the problem GRAFE just solved. 🎨GRAFE, based...
02/10/2026

No two batches of recycled plastic look quite the same - and that's exactly the problem GRAFE just solved. 🎨

GRAFE, based in Blankenhain, has launched CYCOLEN®, a new masterbatch brand built specifically for coloring recycled polymers. What sets it apart isn't really the color itself - it's the fact that every formulation is tailored to the customer's actual recycling material, not some theoretical standard batch.

That distinction matters more than it might sound. Recyclates vary a lot depending on origin, sorting and processing - quality, inherent color, processing behavior, all of it shifts from batch to batch. As Lars Schulze, Head of R&D Product Development at GRAFE, puts it: the goal is a solution for processors who don't just want to use recyclates, but actually integrate them into their applications in terms of color, function and process reliability. And that only works if the development starts from the customer's real material, not an assumed baseline.

CYCOLEN® is aimed at processors working with post-industrial or post-consumer recyclates - PET, HDPE, PP, LDPE and PMMA among them - who want to combine that recycled base with color, additive or functional solutions. GRAFE develops the masterbatches in custom colors, granule forms and batch sizes, and can extend into compound solutions where a project calls for it.

The trickiest part is usually color. Recycled polymers tend to bring their own base tint, which has to be factored into the formulation. Dr. Michael Dirauf, Team Leader Analytics at GRAFE, sums it up well: recyclate isn't just recyclate - every material source comes with its own characteristics, and the job is to understand those and turn them into a stable, processable, visually convincing masterbatch. That takes close collaboration across GRAFE's Design Center, Material Science, Analytics and Production teams.

Beyond color, CYCOLEN® masterbatches can also carry functional additives - stabilizers, processing aids, slip and anti-block agents, impact modifiers, UV and thermal stabilizers - all aimed at making recycled plastics perform better and opening the door to higher-value applications.

There's a design angle too: optical effects, particles, textures and laser marking are all possible - and the laser-markability holds up even through multiple mechanical recycling cycles within a closed system. That could make direct labeling on the plastic itself a real alternative to additional stickers, particularly for circular product concepts.

Managing Director Sebastian Grafe frames it simply: the use of recyclates will keep growing across many industries, and CYCOLEN® gives customers a solution that doesn't treat sustainability in isolation - it ties it directly to color, function and process reliability. 🌍

Advancing Flexible Foam Technology in Vietnam 🤝Wanhua Chemical hosted the Vietnam Flexible Foam Technology Summit in Ho ...
29/09/2026

Advancing Flexible Foam Technology in Vietnam 🤝

Wanhua Chemical hosted the Vietnam Flexible Foam Technology Summit in Ho Chi Minh City, bringing together manufacturers from across the country's homelife and footwear supply chains.

The discussions centred on what moves the flexible foam industry forward: market-driven development, material differentiation, safety standardisation and process optimisation. Wanhua used the summit to share its polyether material innovations and TPU solutions, and to show how differentiated formulations can support downstream producers.

As the company put it, the aim is to "work hand in hand with partners in Vietnam and across the globe" and to keep developing new materials that empower downstream industries.

Regional exchange like this shows how the plastics and rubber community builds knowledge across markets, the same spirit that brings the industry together at K.

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