ORLANDO, Fla.—Nylon Corp. of America (Nycoa) will commercialize a new line of nylon-based thermoplastic elastomers by the end of the year.
The materials, to be sold under the Ny-Flex trade name, are in pilot-scale production, Pratik Shah, vice president of new business development and research and development, said in a May 9 interview at NPE2018 in Orlando.
Manchester, N.H.-based Nycoa will aim Ny-Flex at several end markets, including flexible films, sports and leisure, automotive and composites, according to Shah.
Ny-Flex offers a unique combination of rubber-like elastomeric properties and thermoplastic-like processing capabilities, officials said in a news release. They exhibit a broad range of performance attributes in terms of impact toughness and flexibility, along with processing advantages, they added.
Demand for Nycoa's core nylon resins and compounds is doing well this year in wire and cable and other end markets, President and CEO Jay Bizarro said at NPE2018.
"We can design products around what our customers need," he added.
Nycoa has benefited from having its own polymerization facility and from having pilot-scale production that can sample material rapidly, even in semicommercial amounts, Bizarro said.
The firm also has benefited from an ownership change that took place in late 2013, when Nycoa was acquired by investor Sunil Kumar and his daughter, Monica. Sunil Kumar said at the time that he and Monica "had been looking for the right specialty chemicals company to acquire and build, and found Nycoa to have a unique product line and great reputation within the industry."
Sunil Kumar previously served as president and CEO of materials supplier International Specialty Products and building products supplier GAF Materials Corp., both in Wayne, N.J. Monica Kumar has previous experience at financial firms Citigroup Inc. and AIG and global food and beverage producer PepsiCo. Inc.
"The new ownership is allowing us to invest for strategic growth," Shah said.