Pipe makers search for emerging markets and niches to fuel growth

Global demand is on the increase—if only at 4%/yr through 2007—with mature and developing markets offering quite different opportunities.

In its new World Plastic Pipe report, Cleveland, OH-based Freedonia Group predicts plastic pipe will continue to make gains against competing materials to take 47% of the total world market.

China has the biggest increase with more than 8%/yr growth, but Latin American, the Middle East, and Asia/Pacific—excluding Japan—are also showing an appetite for plastic pipes as investments in residential buildings, conduit for telecommunications, and natural gas distribution rise.

That''s all very good for processors in developing countries, but Western Europe, North America, and Japan are showing stagnation at best as cutbacks in government spending put a squeeze on pipe investment. Nevertheless, there are still opportunities for processors in these regions, if they target niche markets with pipe specialties. Industry spokesmen predict growth in replacing existing pipe systems rather than new construction.

Some of this is being driving by health and safety ordinances requiring limitations of metal (lead, copper, nickel) content in potable water (see "Guidelines..." sidebar, next page). In December 2013 the permissible limit of lead in European drinking water drops to .010 mg/L compared to the .025 mg/L allowed today. This is expected to open up opportunities for PET sleeve lining of lead pipes, or outright replacement with polypropylene or polyethylene alternatives.

Elmar Lockenhoff, managing director of the Plastic Pipe Assn. (Bonn, Germany), says that in the potable water sector in Germany from 1992 to 2001 the installation of copper pipes decreased by 40%, and he expects the trend to continue. Lockenhoff says multilayer plastic pipes, either with EVOH or aluminum barriers, are pushing copper out of this market.

Other pipe developments are finding demand because of the attractive features they offer end users. One such, ProFuse pipe from processor Uponor (Vantaa, Finland), has takers in both potable water and gas utilities markets. This PE 100, large-diameter pipe includes a coextruded peelable PP outer skin. It remains on the pipe during storage as well as installation, and is only removed if joints or off-takes need to be made at certain locations on the pipeline.

A peeling tool is used to expose the clean inner pipe surface where the bond or fittings are made. Derek Muckle, one of the pipe''s developers, says this peeling method improves joint quality by eliminating contamination, and saves time over conventional means. Water provider Dwr Cymru Welsh Water (Nelson, Wales) says this technology has helped it improve the quality of pipe surface for jointing, and the peelable outer skin proved durable throughout installation, particularly in trenchless applications.

In Germany the Thuga Group (Munich), an association of 130 communal and regional water and gas works, is moving from sand-bedded open-trench pipe laying to cheaper non-bedded solutions for cost reasons, says Kerstin Grass, engineer at Thuga. The company uses two niche products which he says have so far proved reliable in rocky soil. One is the SLM pipe system from processor Egeplast (Greven, Germany), which is a PE 100 pipe core coextruded with a tough outer skin of mineral-filled PP as a protection against puncture and crack propagation.

The other solution is the three-layer TS pipe from Wavin (Zwolle, the Netherlands) which has a conventional PE 100 core with inner and outer layers coextruded of Atofina XSC 50, a specialty PE 100 which provides added protection against sharp stone punctures.

Scandinavian insurance companies pay out nearly €800 million/yr in compensation for water damage, 75% of it caused by leaking housepipes or faulty installation. This has created a market for new pipe products including "pipe-within-a-pipe" solutions from processor Uponor. Like a double-hulled oil tanker, the two pipe walls greatly reduce the risk of damage from leaks.

Machinery improvements add value to pipe

To help processors find specialty sectors where they can make money and sustain demand for products, equipment makers have recently introduced some refinements. Cincinnati Extrusion (Vienna, Austria), part of the SMS Plastics Technology Group, has a range of new dies for coextruded polyolefin pipes and a fourth generation IRIS multilayer spiral mandrel distributor.

"While thin, coextruded layers of easy-flowing materials were frequently used in the past as coupling agents or barriers in pipe production; the trend today is moving toward layers that add value to the finished product," says Hans M. Berlisg, marketing director at Cincinnati Extrusion.

"Such layers may add flame retardance, scratch-resistance, or even shielding against electro-magnetic radiation." Compounds suitable for such pipes often are highly viscous and have difficult flow characteristics.

Berlisg says processors are therefore demanding that equipment economically use these expensive resins with minimum layer thickness tolerances. Coinciding with this demand is a trend toward ever-increasing pipe dimensions, ranging from 16 to 630 mm, he says.

At competitor Krauss-Maffei Kunststofftechnik (Munich, Germany), Franz Grajewski, head of extrusion technology, says multilayer polyolefin pipes are adding sales benefits for processors. Along with examples already cited, he mentions a white inner layer coextruded in PE sewage pipe to help improve the performance of cameras used to scan for leaks and damage.

To aid processors, the company has developed a new pipehead range to maximize efficiency in extruding pipe with one or more functional layers. Uniform melt distribution over the pipe cross-section is guaranteed by three concentric, nested spiral distributor systems. It has a star-shaped feed system for pre-distribution of the melt for the core layer. Alternatively, processors can choose a side-feed die, which replaces the front section of the pipehead but has the advantage of leaving the center free for extruder supply lines.

The pipeheads range in size from 10 to 500 mm. Throughput for the core layer is 300 to 1000 kg/hr, and 80 to 250 kg/hr for the inner and outer layers.

Robert Colvin [email protected]

Guidelines pump life into plastic fittings market

The effects of stricter drinking water guidelines introduced across Europe in January 2003 are expected to continue the transition in the region from traditional materials to plastic pipe and fittings, according to the AGPK (Dusseldorf, Germany), a trade group supporting the plastic pipe industry. The guidelines require lower levels of lead, nickel, and copper in water.

Since the liberalized market is expected to lead to water being piped cross-border, the AGPK predicts plastic pipe and fittings will continue to gain on more traditional materials. For instance, although PP and PVC pipes are connected using fittings molded of those materials, cross-linked PE (PEX) pipes usually are connected with brass or stainless steel ones.

In the last five years, the use of molded plastic fittings using polyphenylene sulfone and polyvinyline fluoride has increased, says the AGPK, and they are now approved for use in the U.S. About 10% of all fittings in PEX pipe lines in Germany are now connected using these materials. Advantages cited by the AGPK of these over metal fittings include a reduction in corrosion and an increase in design freedom. In Germany nickel-lined fittings are now illegal in drinking water lines.

Matt Defosse

European pipe market migrating south

Mergers and acquisitions, driven by the three largest pipe extruders in the market, have changed the European pipe extrusion market substantially in the last five years. The three—Wavin (Zwolle, the Netherlands), Uponor (Vantaa, Finland), and Pipelife (Neudorf, Austria)—have grown through internal and external means, but now are being forced to adjust to slower demand growth and increasing competition in a number of markets, according to a recent report on the top 50 European plastic pipe extruders from Applied Market Information Ltd. (Bristol, U.K.).

The report notes that while the Northern European market is seeing restricted growth, processors in Southern Europe are growing at a much more rapid pace as the construction industry in that region has not stalled. Examples of up-and-coming processors include Greece''s Petzetakis, which AMI reckons has about 75,000 tonnes/yr of capacity. In Spain, Plasticos Ferro acquired Grupo Tuyper last September to bring together the two largest PVC pressure pipe processors in the country. The report also points to the ongoing transition from PVC to polyolefin pipe processing throughout the continent. Matt Defosse

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