Decoding Users’ Trends: Meeting the Needs of Auto Industry with Innovative High Performance PP Products (HPPP)

The global auto industry has seen a continuous expansion, with 2016 growth of 5%. Growing at the rate of 2%, Thailand’s auto industry is set to continue that trend, prompting automobile manufacturers to keep developing their products to meet the need of new generations who look for energy-saving vehicles that prioritize safety, aesthetics, and eco-friendliness.

SCG Chemicals has researched and developed products in collaboration with automakers and compound plastic pellet developers to understand the need of motorists and has thus innovated High-Performance PP (HPPP) - plastic resins specifically for the automotive industry to meet every need of drivers and automakers alike, both at present and future trend. SCG is the first supplier with this type of product in ASEAN. High-Performance PP Products can be divided into two groups: Surface Aesthetics (three grades) and High Stiffness (two grades). As for their main strengths, these two groups have been developed to have medium-to-high flowability and enhanced durability so as to meet the requirements of auto manufacturers who are looking to produce vehicles with greater fuel efficiency by using lighter parts and reducing the need for assembly.

Surface Aesthetics HPPP: This group is for products that require an aesthetically pleasing exterior that has grown out of the safety need of motorists. This group of products is utilized to reduce the gloss of interior auto parts to eliminate tiger stripes or tiger marks and is mainly applied to instrument panels inside a car or on bumpers on the outside of a car.

Properties of the Surface Aesthetics Group

• Tiger Mark-Less Solution: These products help eliminate flow marks and tiger marks that occur in both interior and exterior parts when they are molded by injection.
• Low Gloss: These products reduce the shininess of a surface by as much as 50 percent compared to regular polypropylene and lend themselves perfectly to interior parts. The reason that interior parts such as instrumental panels or dashboards need low gloss is that it can help reduce glare from sunlight, which may increase risks for accidents.

High Stiffness HPPP: These plastic resins answer the need for light weight and fuel efficiency without compromising durability, form, and toughness. As a result, these products offer safety and enhanced thermal resistance and can be utilized for both internal and external parts such as instrumental panels, doors, trims, pillars, as well as bumpers.  

Properties of the High Stiffness Group

• High Stiffness: These plastic resins are durable and rigid and can help reduce the density of a product, making them lightweight while maintaining the same durability, which ultimately contributes to energy conservation.
• Thermal Resistance: This increased thermal resistance makes these products suitable for auto parts that need high heat resistance such as engine compartments.

‘Fuel efficiency, aesthetics, and safety’ are the priorities for drivers today, and these needs have resulted in shifts in the automotive industry. In turn, it can be seen that SCG Chemicals has taken in account trends of users’ needs and transformed them into innovation and new approaches to meet such needs

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