K Show Report: Dow director sees growing demand for "engineering up" resins

Customers and processors are pushing the envelope in design in an effort to bring new value and cost savings to the market, said Alan Vanderhider, North American director, technical service & development, Dow Chemical. Vanderhider said the company’s strategy is to move "beyond the pellet" and to help customers bring new products to the market. This can be accomplished, he noted, by making mold flow analysis, prototyping and other services available to interested parties at Dow’s Engineering Materials Center in the U.S. Such efforts can help a customer be first-to-market, or allow them to capitalize on a market trend, one being the move to replace high-end engineering resins with commodity materials that have been "engineered up."
"We have been able to do with olefin-based materials things that have only been done with engineering resins up to this point," Vanderhider said during an interview at the show. "For instance our long-glass fibre, impact-modified polypropylene, Inspire HST, has been able to compete with nylon in certain applications, such as power tools."