Bayer MaterialScience: New facility provides customized polycarbonate solutions

Bayer MaterialScience has inaugurated its Color Competence and Design Center in Guangzhou, China. The new facility provides tailored products and solutions for polycarbonate compounds, ranging from color matching and small-scale production, to the broad range of technical services to support injection-molding and compounding processes. This enables customers to adapt quickly to fast-evolving trends, and explore new options for color, surfaces, geometries and design, while leveraging Bayer MaterialScience´s global expertise and extensive know-how of the local markets.

Dr. Günter Hilken, Global Head of the polycarbonates business and member of the Executive Committee of Bayer MaterialScience, emphasized that the facility is an important means to support the company’s long-term plan to enhance its positioning in the market. “Today, polycarbonates are virtually a commodity for the manufacture of many types of consumer goods, not just for electronics but also automotive and interior electrical applications such as light switches. Our vision is to move the polycarbonates business further downstream - right into the growth markets, much closer to local customers.”

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“Doing so, we deliver not just high quality polycarbonates, but also a wider range of solutions that our customers need, be it in texture, color, or other properties and - at a much faster speed. This new Color Competence and Design Center in Guangzhou is an important addition to our global network of capabilities geared towards realizing this vision with currently four specialized compounding centers around the world. Especially the domestic markets in China as the growth engine of the Asia-Pacific region will benefit from this enhanced set-up,” he added.

Dr. Rainer Rettig, Senior Vice President of the Polycarbonate Advanced Resins Division in Asia-Pacific said: “Technology and consumer demands are constantly changing in today’s digital age. As a result, our customers in Asia-Pacific, particularly those in the electronics and IT manufacturing segment, are facing a tremendous challenge to manufacture a large variety of products with ever new looks and properties in small quantities and within a short lead time. By providing them quick access to a full range of expertise, our Color Competence and Design Center in Guangzhou is designed to support our customers in meeting those challenges.”

Versatile service offer for flexible production
The center is home to four key capabilities for tailored polycarbonate solutions offered by Bayer MaterialScience: a color competence center, including a color interaction room; flexible small-scale production and sampling; and quality control as well as quality assurance along the process chain. As part of the global network, experienced specialists will boost the support of customers’ projects by tailored technical advice and consultancy. The new set up is strategically located in the heart of the industrial area in Guangzhou to serve customers such as OEMs and parts providers for consumer electronics that are based in this region.

Because of the high turnover of consumer electronics products, including laptop computers, mobile phones, televisions and home electronics, among others, manufacturers are often faced with the challenge of producing small quantities of a wide variety of products. Color Competence and Design Center’s scalable production capacity from kilogram requirements to tonnage orders according to customer’s needs is state-of-the-art. This capability is essential as it helps customers minimize waste while meeting demand, reducing costs and enhancing production efficiency.

The Color Competence Center of the new set up is the second facility of its kind of Bayer MaterialScience in China. Similar to the Color Competence Center in Shanghai, the facility in Guangzhou offers customers services in color-matching, color development and sample production. This service helps customers enhance the creativity of their color designs while also enjoying high-levels of consistency in production by ensuring their color preferences can be replicated across their manufacturing facilities around the world.

Other Color Competence and Design Center facilities of Bayer MaterialScience are located in Uerdingen (Germany), Filago (Italy), Newark (USA), and Map Ta Phut (Thailand). The new facility in Greater Noida (India) is scheduled to come on-stream in 2010. The six Color Competence and Design Centers are complemented with Innovation Centers in Germany, Japan, and the Polymers Research and Development Center in Shanghai (China).

More Information: www.bayermaterialscience.de

Bayer MaterialScience AG, Leverkusen, Germany

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