DuPont Packaging & Industrial Polymers orders two blown-film extrusion lines from Battenfeld Gloucester Engineering (www.bge.battenfeld.com) for installation at its new R&D lab in Shanghai, located in the DuPont China Research and Development Center that opened last year.

The blown-film lines will be used by DuPont and its customers to develop multilayer and barrier films for the growing market for food and consumer-products packaging, industrial films and other applications. Equipment includes a three-layer line primarily for smaller-scale development work, and a nine-layer line for production scale-up employing components specified by DuPont to enhance process capabilities and barrier properties. The three-layer system will installed this summer; the nine-layer unit is expected online in the fall.

“Blown-film coextrusion is an important market for the barrier resins and specialty ethylene copolymers that DuPont offers globally,” says Roger Kant, Asia-Pacific business development and technical manager for DuPont Packaging & Industrial Polymers. “The decision to invest in the nine-layer line is based on our confidence in the industry's potential for expansion.”

The nine-layer line will be one of the most advanced in China, Battenfeld Gloucester says, extruding films in gauges of 30 to 250 microns, with a maximum 50-in. layflat width. It features nine smooth-bore Contracool™ extruders; an online beta thickness gauge from NDC Infrared Engineering; Enercon Industries corona treaters; and two Model 1011S single-turret, center-gap winders. DuPont will develop multilayer and barrier structures based on its own grades of various resins. Initial results of development work on both lines could be available later this year, DuPont says.