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AkzoNobel boosts LED materials
Unspecified investment at Texas site
AkzoNobel is to boost capacity at its site in Battleground, Texas, which is the largest of its kind in the world, to meet increasing demand for LEDs in the semiconductor industry. This will see the extension by Q3 2013 of a trimethyl aluminium unit to supply feedstock for a new trimethyl gallium (TMG) facility, which should be ready in August 2014. TMG is a high purity metal organic for LED wafer manufacturing and related applications.
Although full details of the investment and the extent of expansion were not disclosed, Werner Fuhrmann, executive committee member responsible for the company’s Specialty Chemicals business, said that the LED industry had been growing at over 20%/year. This is expected to continue over the next decade, driven by demand in displays such as PCs, laptops and tablet screens, as well as in general lighting.
Separately, AkzoNobel has signed an exclusive worldwide agreement with the OM Group for the distribution of the latter’s Borchi Oxy Cure accelerators in the curing of unsaturated polyester and vinylester resins in the composites industry. The company said that these would be “an important addition to our Nouryact Cobalt replacement portfolio”.
OM Group, a diversified speciality chemicals and materials company, will be focusing more on other core markets. It acquired Borchi Oxy Cure, which is based on a patented iron ligand technology that was originally developed by Unilever for detergents and which can be used in place of cobalt in the curing of unsaturated polyester resins, last year, along with the former Rahu Catalytics.