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Mr. Werner du Toit, Vice President of Strategic Marketing
IRNEA: What are LOMOLD's products and their target markets?
Mr. du Toit: LOMOLD is a highly diversified group. We operate across several markets as we supply plastic materials, pallets and technology. For plastic materials, rotomoulding powders are compounded, milled and distributed into Southern Africa, where it is used by our customers to manufacture water tanks and a multitude of other products using the rotational moulding process. We are the largest suppliers of colour-compounded powders in Africa.
Engineering plastics are compounded and supplied to strict specifi cations into the automotive and engineering markets in Southern Africa, China and Europe. These materials include short glass-, talc and calcium carbonate fi lled grades as well as long fi bre thermoplastic (LFT) grades that are produced through a pultrusion process and offer signifi cant property enhancements.
Recycled materials are granulated, extruded and supplied to the Southern African market for use in injection moulding, blow moulding, fi bre-spinning and extrusion. A wide variety of materials is recycled including PET, LLDPE, LD, PP, HD, ABS and HIPS. We are the largest recycler of hard plastics in South Africa.
We also produce lightweight plastic pallets capable of meeting the demanding ISO standards for general industry. These are manufactured and supplied into South Africa, Europe and China. These patented pallets are made from a single, durable material that allows transport savings and long lifespan, delivering signifi cantly lower lifecycle costs than competing wood pallets.
LOMOLD has also recently developed a pallet made from recycled PET (post consumer softdrink bottles) that is reinforced with long glass-fi bres — the fi rst company in the world to successfully achieve this. Pallets made from this material using the LOMOLD technology exhibit high strength and allow the use of the largest source of plastic waste into durable, strong products that reduces costs and carbon footprint.
IRNEA: How would you describe the LOMOLD technology and what are its advantages?
Mr. du Toit: Historically, the automotive and aeronautics industries have used LFT to replace steel and reduce weight, but they have been hampered by certain drawbacks. The two processes for manufacturing LFT components are injection moulding, which cannot retain fibre lengths and products thus have reduced strength, and compression moulding, which retains fibre lengths but cannot produce complex parts and needs considerable post-mould trimming and cutting.
LOMOLD overcomes all these problems and essentially captures the benefits of each of these processes while retaining none of the drawbacks. The patented LOMOLD technology allows normal plastics to be reinforced with long fi bres thermoplastics (LFT) in complex designs. The LFT imparts incredible strength to the composite material and enable light-weighting and cost reductions. This moulding technology is available for licensing by selected partners and forms part of total turnkey solution offered by LOMOLD in terms of materials, manufacturing equipment and product design that allow major cost savings and new design potential.
LOMOLD has been honoured with two innovation prizes including a $200,000 award and has most recently been selected as the winner of the best recycled product in South Africa for its 100% recycled PET pallet.
These achievements included the prestigious JEC Innovation Awards in 2010 in Paris in recognition of our high-performance LFT PP pallet. The JEC is the largest composites industry organisation globally with over 250,000 members from 96 countries.