@spid81 happy to make some observational comments on the announcement, please find below:
* Great that the graphene is in a masterbatch. Masterbatch is the way to get a speciality chemical into a plastic structure, such as a colour or UV stabilisers and now graphene
. This now means a commercial plastic manufacture can dose graphene into their product. The plastic manufacture will already be set up to accurately does in an array of masterbatches.
* My understanding from speaking with some chemists and plastics experts it isn't so easy to get the graphene to disperse into the plastic, so making the intermediary masterbatch shouldn't be overlooked in terms of complexity especially when we considered the atomic particular size of the material we are dealing with.
* Where this announcement is light on details is the inclusion rate of graphene in the masterbatch and therefore the potential application rate in the finished product. From here what are improved strength and mechanical properties of adding graphene into LDPE?
* I would suggest we are in the infancy here, the company needs a Technical Data Sheet, so plastic manufactures can then start to in-corporate the material into their process, with FGR you wouldn't know if this exists or not, but I wouldn't have thought it would have been too hard to generate some early numbers. The addition of the graphene will likely mean improved strength, so you maybe able light-weight the plastic by 20-30%, which a cost saving in $ and the environment, you are also like to change the surface tension of the plastic too which could be beneficial. But cost of adding graphene needs to be weighed up - LDPE resin is around $2.50 / kg give or take
* LDPE is commonly used in soft plastic applications, by nature its a low density structure versus HDPE, the Oyster baskets are HDPE, from the announcement last year they were aiming to make a HDPE masterbatch - I dont think we have had an update since, due to the higher density of the packing of the PE it maybe harder to incorporate the graphene into a masterbatch?
* Whilst we are on the subject what ever happed to our friends Chemiplas and their skateboard wheels? Chemiplas is major supplier into the plastic industry, it would have been great to know who is now going to be selling this masterbatch?
* For now its a nice to know announcement, but lacks any real commercial excitement, hence I can see why it was marked non-price sensitive.
GLTAH
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