The use of thermoplastics in the electrical and electronics industry (E&E) will continue to grow strongly in the future thanks to megatrends such as Industry 4.0, LED lighting and the digital networking of building services engineering, household appliances and entertainment electronics. LANXESS’s High Performance Materials business unit – one of the world’s leading suppliers of compounds based on polyamide 6, polyamide 66 and polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) with its Durethan and Pocan brands – is therefore boosting its operations for the E&E industry. A new E&E Marketing and Sales segment has been set up that pools the resources for this industry and organizes them in a more focused way.

“Our objective is to respond faster to the wishes of our partners in the E&E industry. We also want them to have access to a wider selection of listed materials that precisely meet their technical requirements,” explains Holger Mersmann, head of the new group, setting out its strategic orientation. “Our goal is to enter into long-term partnerships with our customers where our product portfolio and technical expertise provide them with competitive advantages.”

Competence Center for technical support

The new Marketing/Sales segment is supported by an E&E Competence Center that is responsible for product and applications development. Its job is to pick up on technical trends in the market early and work with customers to turn these into market-ready products. Mersmann: “We aim to provide E&E-specific services as part of a holistic approach, where we support our customers at all stages of component development – from the first concept idea and material selection to component design, mold construction, processing and all the way to series launch.” To this end, E&E-specific services have been added to the HiAnt package, through which the business unit usually supports customers with component development. A simulation tool has already been developed, for example, that enables molded parts to be designed properly in terms of their thermal conductivity. With this tool, it is possible to investigate how the temperature of an LED component when the lamp is in operation depends on the component geometry and material.

Global focus of activities

Organizationally, the Marketing/Sales segment and the Competence Center have a global orientation. They focus primarily on industrial applications, household appliances, LED lighting, power tools and consumer and home electronics. They have close links to the business unit’s centers for product and applications development and testing and processing technology based in all the key economic regions around the world. “This enables us to precisely meet the regional needs of global customers with development and production sites worldwide,” says Mersmann. “Our customers also benefit from our plastics being available globally in the same high quality.”

Detailed information on Durethan and Pocan properties, applications and processing technologies for the E&E industry can be found in the High Performance Materials TechCenter at www.durethan.com and www.pocan.com.