Home / News / Clariant’s Licocene named finalist for German award

Clariant's Licocene named finalist for German award

26 Mar '15
2 min read

Clariant, a specialty chemicals manufacturer has been named finalist for a German Award for its Licocene polyolefin-based waxes.

Clariant is a finalist in the prestigious German business innovation award, ‘Innovationspreis der Deutschen Wirtschaft 2015’ in the category of large company.

The achievement relates to Clariant's Licocene polyolefin-based waxes, recognised for advancing sustainability in textiles, plastics and coatings manufacturing.

According to a Clariant press release, Licocene waxes give manufacturers the possibility to use fewer ingredients, reduce manufacturing steps, and use less resource-intensive production processes.

In textiles, cooperation between Clariant and German coatings specialist Lacom GmbH has succeeded in changing energy-intensive, water-based textile coating technology to a less energy-consuming process of hot melt coating using very low amounts of Licocene additives.

“There are also environmental benefits for final products, such as improving the recyclability of textiles, or reducing product weight,” Clariant said.

Licocene's ability to support more sustainable processing is particularly valued in energy-intensive sectors, such as technical textiles for mattresses, furniture and carpets for automotive and aerospace interiors.

They are also used in the manufacture of masterbatches and engineering plastics, as well as in industrial coatings, and in printing inks and adhesives for packaging applications.

The award jury of leading science and business representatives also acknowledged Licocene for promoting home-grown R&D and technical processing within Germany.

The product's development involved collaboration between Clariant's researchers in Hoechst and researchers at the University of Hamburg, leading to the piloting and building of a full-scale production unit.

“Clariant continues to work closely with its customers both inside and outside of Germany to use Licocene to bring sustainability advances to the market segments,” it said.

As of 2016, the company will have achieved a 50 per cent increase in its production capacity for Licocene to support the increasing interest in the product and its extensive application possibilities.

"This accolade for Clariant reinforces the increasing importance placed on sustainability within society today,” Oliver Kinkel, head of the Additives business unit at Clariant said.

He added, “With Licocene systems, users can achieve significantly higher efficiency levels, supporting efforts to address current global challenges such as the efficient use of resources and energy."

This is the second occasion a Clariant development has been acclaimed by the organisers as its Exolit halogen-free flame retardants too were in the finalsof the 2012-2013 awards. (AR)

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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