Polymer Manufacture – free radical solution polymerisation

The R&D group of an international additives supplier developed a new product in-house but they did not have the capacity or facility for polymer manufacturing. They contracted Witton Chemical Co. Ltd as a toll manufacturing partner to scale up and manufacture the material.

Continual optimisation and improvement is demonstrated by :-

  • Scale up from the initial 1 litre lab scale via pilot plant trials and on to full scale 15 tonne polymerisation batches took less than 6 months.
  • Our analysts devised testing regimes to ensure product quality.
  • A key raw material is derived from a natural source and varies from season to season. Producing consistent final product from an inconsistent staring material required an extensive understanding of the polymerisation and a laboratory screening process for each new batch of starting material.
  • Due to our success contract manufacturing this product for our customer they also transferred other toll manufactured products from other contract manufacturers to Witton Chemical Company.

The business required:-

  • The staged installation of ancillary plant and equipment to hold bulk raw material stocks and allow tanker deliveries of bulk loads. This allows lower raw material costs and therefore lowers contract manufacturing costs.
  • The purchase of new analytical equipment to allow quality testing to oil industry standards.