Austria's Sunpor Opens Second Expandable Polystyrene Manufacturing Plant

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Austria's only manufacturer of expandable polystyrene (EPS), Sunpor Kunststoff GmbH (St. Pölten, Austria) has opened a second manufacturing plant in St. Pölten-Radlberg, Austria, which will raise its total manufacturing capacity of EPS to 175,000 tons per year.

Sunpor is a subsidiary of the Norwegian holding company O. N. Sunde AS (Oslo), which is owned by Olav Nils Sunde and has interests in shipping, real estate and clothing retail, in addition to the insulation materials produced by Sunpor. Sunpor began manufacturing EPS in 1988, with an annual output of about 10,000 tons per year. By the end of 2008, the production capacity of the firm had increased to 75,000 tons per year.

The EPS manufactured by Sunpor is used extensively in the insulation sector, particularly for insulation boards used in the building industry, cycle and ski safety helmets and in the packaging industry. EPS has excellent insulation properties against both cold and heat, offers resistance to dampness and has low-weight properties.

The second EPS plant is located just 10 kilometers from the company's headquarters in St. Pölten and covers an area of 42,000 square meters. Sunpor has invested almost $77 million in the new plant, which boasts its own fire brigade and is supplied with the energy equivalent of 2 million cubic meters of natural gas in the form of steam from a local biomass power plant run by the Egger Group (St. Johann, Austria).

Sunpor has applied the most modern technology in the design and construction of the new plant. The firm, which has a long-standing tradition in the maintenance of environmental standards, was awarded the "Responsible Care" certificate by the Austrian trade association for the chemical industry in 2005. The award recognizes compliance with healthy production and environmentally friendly production processes.

Raw materials for the new plant are supplied by a new 1-kilometer rail link to the existing St. Pölten-Krems line. This link will handle up to 600 deliveries of hazardous materials each year, removing the risks associated with the road transport of such materials. A new logistics terminal using start-of-the-art technology has been built in combination with the plant to handle the reception of raw materials.

With a greater than two-fold increase in its production capacity, Sunpor has become one of Europe's three largest EPS producers and is in a good position to work closely with strategic business alliances, in particular in Eastern and Southeastern Europe.

Despite the current global economic downturn, Sunpor sees the timing of the opening of the new plant as optimal. Speaking at the inauguration of the new plant, Olav Sunde explained that "the efficient use of energy has become a keynote concern. Building insulation has shown itself to be one of the most effective ways of addressing this issue and EPS is the ideal material for the purpose. In the petrochemical Industry, EPS is consequently one of the future's main strategic products."

One potential problem with EPS and polystyrene foams in general is the environmental impact of the finished product. EPS is non-biodegradable, but it can be recycled mechanically by feeding the material into a granulator, which cuts the material into small granules that can then be reprocessed. An American based company, Ecovative Design LLC (Green Island, New York) has created new products from agricultural waste mixed with fungi cells as an alternative to EPS. The resulting product is a strong biological matrix that requires less energy for production and is also biodegradable. However, the process has not yet been scaled up to compete with the production levels of EPS.

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