Acquos Masterbatch today announces a major investment into its Black Masterbatch business unit.

Acquos continues to strengthen its commitment to local manufacture

04 January 2010

As part of a recent strategic review and consultation with our customers, we have reorganized our black masterbatch strategy. The cornerstone of this is a significant investment in our Black Masterbatch unit. The aim of this upgrade is to cover production of both small volume and large volume items.

The investment will include the installation of a new $1.2m extruder. This unit is the most advanced extruder in the world and allows for significant improvements in outputs. The aim of this investment is to ensure that Acquos Masterbatch has the lowest possible cost base for large volume black masterbatches with the ability to supply at world scale volumes.

Furthermore, we intend to replace our older specialties black masterbatch lines with new units that aim to expand our specialties range of black masterbatches. We believe that to best serve the market in this area, it is important that we make our products locally or the very least source them regionally.

We continue to expand our association with Clariant Masterbatches (the world leader in masterbatch) by further expanding the range available locally of their global black masterbatches manufactured regionally in Thailand.

As part of this investment and the business strategy review of the black masterbatch business, we have along with Hubron United Kingdom mutually decided to cease distributing their products in the Australian Market. This will be effective from the end of Q1 2010. Whilst Hubron had been an important agency for us in the past, especially during the Ciba Masterbatch years when Ciba did not have any local black masterbatch capabilities, the 2007 Clariant acquisition brought to Acquos Masterbatch a very large efficient local manufacturing capability along with a very technically skilled team. We have found the ability to produce locally to be very advantageous especially due to the shorter lead times to manufacture than to import from the United Kingdom (up to 3 months) as well as being able to produce locally giving us the ability to manufacture products from a technical standpoint more suited to our customers as opposed to being reliant on external manufacturers.

We are sure that this exciting investment and business strategy best suits your ongoing requirements for black masterbatches here in Australia. If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact either myself on (03) 94637777, our Black Masterbatch Product Manager, Neil Whelan on 0438 108 417 or your account manager. All the best of business success to you in 2010.

Kind Regards
Frank De Fazio
Managing Director
Acquos Masterbatch Pty Ltd