Case Studies

Dual Supplying “Black Box Blends”

A long-time Barentz customer had been single-sourced with a proprietary “black-box blend” from a major UV supplier for their outdoor durability requirements. All was well until the UV supplier couldn’t deliver material as agreed, and wouldn’t be able to for an undetermined amount of time – Addipel got the frantic call when this plant was in danger of shutting down one of their most profitable items.

We quickly came up with potential replacement formulations tailored to the application, and ushered it through the weathering and testing process with our network of world-class 3rd party laboratories.

From here, we down-selected one formulation and our customer scaled up. After some end-customer trials, the Addipel product was approved across the board.

In this process, Addipel managed to:

• Get our customer out of a short-supply jam
• Qualify a new UV formulation in record time
• Set up a second source for security of supply
• Improve our customer’s profitability by saving ~8% on the per pound additive cost

Case Studies

Internal Pellet Production

A major automotive compounder was having difficulty creating pellets of a critical formulation with their internal pellet making capabilities.

They utilized internal pelletizing for additives with health/safety concerns to ensure accurate and facile dosage into the extruder, and to minimize the number of hoppers and feeders they needed to use.

A new brominated flame retardant formulation that showed outstanding results in the lab was very difficult to pelletize because it would melt out and clog up the pellet die. They leveraged their internal resources, but didn’t have the expertise as they had only ran higher-melting materials before.

Addipel designed optimized production parameters to achieve targeted throughput to meet a significant order in a compressed timeframe.

When we sat down to finalizing pricing, our customer was shocked to learn that their “true cost”, considering per pound costs vs. all internal resources, was actually lower by utilizing Addipel’s compacted pellets!

We were able to deliver multiple truckloads of the FR pellets within a month of the project starting, and our customer was able to utilize their new and improved formulation to drive their profitable growth.

Case Studies

Keeping Secrets

One of Barentz’ oldest compounding customers did a lot of highly-proprietary formulating, which was their key competitive edge in their marketspace.

This customer relied on a complex international web of tollers to make compounds within local markets. This innovative, confidential formulation was on a strictly need-to-know basis – and every toller around the world didn’t need to know!

This customer decided to work with Addipel because of the trust that we and Barentz built over many years of doing business. We became the keepers and protectors of their cherished formulation secrets, and continue to manufacture these pellets today.

Case Studies

Labor Shortages

Throughout 2021, we have heard consistent reports of labor shortages at masterbatch producers around the country.

Many masterbatchers make powder blends for internal consumption. While they tend to be comfortable handling all sorts of powdered additives, recently they have needed to allocate precious labor to other areas in the plant to meet surging demand. As a result, they no longer had resources to commit to internal blending.

When Addipel got the call, since they were an existing customer, we already had the necessary raw materials in Barentz’ warehouse, just a few miles away from our plant.

After some negotiations, we made a strategic deal with our customer, and quickly turned around truckload quantities of preblend mixtures to support their demand.