New production facility for ROHACELL in Darmstadt increases capacity

At the end of 2013 Evonik Industries AG successfully began operation of its new production facility for ROHACELL® structural foam at the Darmstadt site, following an investment of approximately six million Euros. The new facility will increase the polymerization capacity at the site by fifty percent. Due to the extensive automation of polymerization, the cycle times have dropped by almost half.

“The facility enables us to account for the increasing demand and growth strategy for ROHACELL®,” says Dr. Andreas Hoff, Head of Performance Foams and responsible for the ROHACELL® Business Segment. At the same time, the polymerization process was automated with modern robot technology in many areas. This led to shorter cycle times and therefore, significantly increased capacity.

Stefan Plaß, Head of the Growth Line Advanced Technologies, looks toward the future: “ROHACELL® is expanding into ever larger serial applications. Our customers expect highly efficient and economic production processes from us. Only in this way can we make lightweight construction with ROHACELL® attractive for large quantities and new applications. We're making an important step in this direction with automating the polymerization, but we are also planning further automations and optimizations in the production process.”

ROHACELL® is a structural foam based on polymethacrylimide, which is used in fiber-reinforced composite parts for lightweight applications. The most important market segments are aerospace and lifestyle, as well as automotive engineering and wind energy.