Thermoplastic company buys shares

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team May 4, 2007

Premix has acquired 89% of the shares in Optatech, a Finnish specialty plastics developer and producer.

Premix has acquired 89% of the shares in Optatech, a Finnish specialty plastics developer and producer.

The main products developed by Optatech include Pacrel TPV, a special acrylic modified elastomer; produced through a patented solid state polymerisation, and Lubotene, a special silicone grafted polyethylene intended for applications with low friction factor and release properties.

Optatech is a spin-off from Neste, the Finnish oil giant, which withdrew from plastics operations in 1990s.

It was founded by Dr Tomi Heiskanen, previously Neste's Technology Director, and Dr Christer Bergstrom.

It started its operations in 1995 by buying several Neste patents on specialty polymers.

The founders, together with Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, will sell their shares to Premix.

Proventia group, an environmental technology company, will remain as owner with about 11% of the shares.

Optatech has two joint ventures in China.

Yangzhong Opta Chemical produces and markets nonhalogen flame-retardant cable compounds and Nanjing Jinling Opta Polymer produces PP/EPDM and the Pacrel base polymer that Optatech is selling to the compounding industry outside China.

The combined revenue of the JV and Optatech is Eur 5 million.

The mother company employs four people whereas the JV employs 65 people in total.

Premix says it has resources and determination to accelerate the growth of the two China joint ventures, and to further increase their growth by introducing Premix' own products to be produced in China and to import the currently produced grades into Europe and USA.

Premix is a global supplier of conductive plastics with headquarters located in Finland and US operations in Milton Wisconsin, under the name Premix Thermoplastics.

The Premix range of conductive plastics covers the full spectrum of the conductivity range from statically dissipative ESD materials into extremely conductive grades for EMI shielding, conductor and grounding applications.