Fabrikstr. 3
39393 Völpke

Germany

Business: Plastic producer, Trade

Products: Additiv

Additives: Lubricants, Mold release agents, Processing aids

Company profile: Voelpker – a family-owned company with innovative strength

With our more than 100 years of production history, we are among the most long-standing wax producers in Europe and are internationally renowned as a reliable manufacturer and supplier of montan waxes and special waxblends.

True to the motto “to make ideas work”, we do everything to improve and optimize our customers’ products and processes. We design special waxes that are precisely tailored to their requirements. We have served as a reliable partner and developed individual solutions for many branches in recent decades.


Product information: Montan waxes – when performance counts

Montan waxes are used as high performance additives in the plastics industry, due to their unique properties. They serve as combined external and internal lubricants, nucleation additives and dispersing agents in many types of plastics and processing methods. Montan waxes are particularly valued for new, technically demanding tasks when it comes to special requirements in terms of the performance of a high performance lubricant.

Examples of applications
Thermoplastics: PA, PBT, TPU, PC, PVC, Styrenics
Thermosetts: Epoxy resins, Phenolic resins, Polyurethane

The salts of montanic acid act as nucleating agents and are added to crystallizable thermoplastics, such as polyamides. Their purpose is to accelerate crystallization and thus speed up the production process.
Montan waxes serve as dispersing agents in masterbatches for coloring plastics. They ensure that the pigment particles are properly wetted and give rise to a finer dispersion (e.g. also in PS, PMMA, SAN, PC). Agglomerates are thus prevented from forming in the polymer. In the end product, this leads to very good color strength and distribution, provided that the wax and polymer are of similar polarity and are highly compatible with one another.

Partially saponified montan wax esters are suitable dispersion agents for filled polymers, e.g.: talcum filled PP, fibreglass filled PBT, PA, PC. For highly cellulose fiber filled polymer composites, Völpker offers processing aids based on regrowing waxes.

Long-term availability

Planning certainty is an important factor for us and for our customers’ production processes. That is why we at Völpker pay particular attention to the long-term availability of raw montan wax, which is extracted from bituminous lignite. According to our raw material supplier, the global supply of raw wax will be secure until at least 2030. At the same time new lignite deposits are also being explored to ensure product availability beyond the year 2030.