BACKGROUND
Founded in Northern Ireland in 1958, Brett Martin has remained a family business, with over 1000 staff at locations across the UK. Through investment in dedicated wind energy generation along with an external sources of solar electricity Brett Martin achieved a major carbon saving by converting 25-30% of the energy use at their main manufacturing site to these sustainable sources.
The use of recycled materials supports the trend towards a circular economy and Brett Martin are continually researching new products which can add value to recycled resources.
The Chemistry specialists at Brett Martin approached the Polymer Processing Research Centre, (now AMIC), in the late 1990’s to begin a 25 year collaboration on process and product development that continues to this day.
CHALLENGE
Taking their environmental commitments seriously they wanted to explore moving away from traditional additives and fillers to more sustainable alternatives. This has the potential to significantly reduce the carbon footprint of their products that use such fillers e.g. foamed PVC sheet, rigid PVC sheet, pipes but also to enhance the overall properties of the products themselves.
INNOVATION
The team at AMIC worked directly with Brett Martin to process and optimise the development of novel filled PVC formulations using the AKT funding model. This development included extensive processing trials using AMICs in-house pilot scale extrusion and rheological equipment alongside full-scale industrial trials at Brett Martins’ main production facility in Northern Ireland.
RESULT
Natural filler alternatives were sourced locally, are currently undergoing further customer trials. An additional outcome was a reduced processing time leading to decreased energy usage for that product. If successful, could lead to further energy usage reductions for the site and business as a whole.
IMPACT
The results from this initial research have demonstrated carbon footprint savings for Brett Martin in their construction sector product portfolio. It has shown that traditional mineral filler can be successfully replaced with a local sustainable filler. It has also shown the additional benefit of reduced energy usage in the processing of these fillers in to extruded products.
WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY
“This project has demonstrated the value of pilot scale investigations of this nature. The work was completed in a condensed time frame, yielding results that might otherwise not have been available to us for years.” Richard Vaughan, Brett Martin.