Toll Resin Manufacture at Witton Chemical

An international manufacturer of cabling required a new manufacturer for their proprietary polymeric materials. Previously some material had been manufactured by another toll manufacturer and some made in-house but they now required a new contract manufacturing partner.

The first project involved:

  • The larger scale manufacture of a base catalysed condensation polymerisation of an aldehyde and ketone.
  • Demonstration that resin made by Witton matched the performance of resin made by their previous toll manufacturer.
  • New testing regime to meet their requirements.
  • Casting the molten resin into blocks rather than the use of a cooled belt to reduce CAPEX requirements.
  • Choice of the correct packaging and pack size to allow our customers operators to easily handle the solid resin and charge the correct amounts to their process.
  • Over 1000 successful batches made

A second related but more critical project involved:

  • The scale up of a step growth free radical polymerisation of an aromatic material to give an oligomeric antioxidant.
  • Demonstration that this material made by Witton matched the performance of resin made previous in-house.
  • Setting up a new GPC analysis and specification based on a “Gold Standard” sample to ensure this in the future
  • Casting the molten resin into blocks using the packaging chosen above followed by vacuum drying/grinding to give a dry powder of the correct particle size.
  • Over 1000 of successful batches made