Joao Lorenzoni and Steven Devlies, Unimin – Fire safety is increasingly important in today’s world as polymers are more extensively present and the population more urban. Fire safety standards in developing countries can be expected to progressively tighten.
Already today, manufacturers worldwide tend to produce to US or EU fire safety standards because supply chains are globalised. Unimin expects developments in polyolefins, as performance is improved to enable replacement of more expensive engineering polymers. Challenges in FR development include ensuring low smoke emissions (visibility is important for escape), sustainability and recyclability, health and environmental safety. PIN FR solutions include high-grade mineral FRs (with engineered particle size distribution and surface treatment) to address materials performance challenges and new combination packages of existing PIN FRs and synergists. For Unimin, this AMI conference enables new industry contacts and networking and a vision of the North American FR industry status and challenges. It is also considered an excellent occasion to present to the industry Sibelco group’s growth ambitions in mineral flame retardants for the North-American market.
Unimin is part of Sibelco, a global mineral (non fuel) mining company with 9 500 employees. The company’s core competence is milling, with dedicated processes for different minerals, enabling production of specific grades and characteristics. www.unimin.com