Page 46 - Plastics News March 2018

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Nice Rail to recycle fiberglass, plastics into composite rail ties

new business making composite railroad ties from provides design and manufacturing solutions to railroad
A recycled plastics and fiberglass plans to have a customers in industrial, passenger transit and Class I
workforce of 82 employees when it is fully operational sectors across North America. The subsidiary is based in
in St. Louis. Richmond, British Columbia, and has six U.S. plants and
one in Mexico, according to its website.
Nice Rail Products LLC will recycle fiberglass from patent-
pending technology and then process it with recycled
plastics to make railroad ties trademarked as Evertrak. Polycomp’s Flat fiberglass
offers higher loading and lower

warpage

hongqing Polycomp International Corp. has
Cdeveloped a family of glass fibers for composites
reinforcing with a flat cross section, which the company
The company is hiring about 25 workers this month claims enables higher loading and better mechanical
with experience in extrusion, quality control and properties. Benefits include higher impact strength
manufacturing."We set out to build a company that and reduced warpage in thin-wall sections of injection
sparks greatness in others and is worthy of our collective molded thermoplastic composites.Other benefits
potential as leaders," founder and CEO Tim Noonan said in
a news release from the Missouri Department of Economic include lower shear, which provides better fluidity,
Development. "We are poised to disrupt hundreds of years reducing friction and viscosity buildup and lowering
of the status quo and do it in a way that is good for the fiber entanglement and breakage since the flat fibers
planet."Noonan is also an investor in Re-Poly, which is a St. tend to flow in planar sheets, like mica, rather than
Louis recycling facility focusing on bulk plastics, majority rolling and tumbling line conventional round glass
owned by QRS Recycling. QRS will supply Nice with used filaments, the company claims.
plastics, while Owens Corning, an insulation and roofing
manufacturer, is supplying the fiberglass.QRS will supply
millions of pounds of recycled plastics to Nice, which will
end up as standard crossties, turnout ties and specialty
ties for bridges, tunnels and grade crossings. "Our patent-
pending technology to create true composite railroad ties
will divert hundreds of millions of pounds of plastic and
never before recycled waste fiberglass from the landfill,
and after decades of service, Evertrak ties will be recycled
into new ties," Nice Rail Products President Matt Moore
said in a news release late last year about the pending
product launch. Polycomp comes in filament widths of 28 microns, and
The company says its technology named "Nice Glass" filament thickness of 7 microns. They get turned into
can unlock the value of waste fiberglass. The resulting chopped strands.The company is based in Dadukou,
composite ties can be interspersed with wood ties and are China and is a subsidiary of YTH Group. A global
suitable in areas with termite infestations, water intrusion conglomerate of glass-fibers, mineral composites,
and soft sub-grades, according to Nice's business partner
and distributor, Voestalpine Nortrak Inc. A wholly owned textiles, financing and trading companies.The U.S.
subsidiary of Voestalpine VAE GmbH of Austria, Nortrak operation is in Amsterdam, N.Y.

Plastics News March 2018 46