This year's International Polyurethane Conference drew more than 200 national and international representatives from the polyurethane industry to Sankt Augustin. Participants were invited to this established industry gathering by the Specialist Association Foamed Plastics and Polyurethanes (FSK) and Hennecke GmbH, bringing together accumulated competence and strong drive for innovation. This was a suitable occasion for Hennecke GmbH to hold the official opening of its state-of-the-art application technology center.
The Hennecke company premises in Sankt Augustin provided the large number of participants at the International Polyurethane Conference with the ideal setting for the diverse conference programme. The highlight of this was the ceremonial opening of the new application technology TECHCENTER, where Hennecke is pooling its research capabilities into a total area of more than 1000 square metres at its company headquarters and thereby significantly expanding its development capacities.
In his welcome speech, Rolf Trippler, the Managing Director of Sales at Hennecke GmbH, traced the historic arc of the company from its foundation to today, describing its innovations and milestones. Along with interesting technical presentations from the companies ENGEL AUSTRIA GmbH, MAGNA STEYR AG and Audi AG, which primarily focused on solutions in the lightweight automotive construction, the participants were also able to experience live demonstrations at the opening. Among them was the production of a load floor module using PURCSM spray technology as well as the production of a fibre composite part in the insitu process. The factory tours inside Hennecke's production facilities were also particularly popular. In addition, the visitors could familiarize themselves in detail with the project InCar®plus in a specially provided show truck. With this project, ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe AG is substantially optimising efficiency in drive, body and chassis components through the use of intelligent lightweight construction.
With the new TECHCENTER, Hennecke has now set a new milestone in its company history. In addition to product development and product optimisation, the comprehensive service portfolio of the Hennecke TECHCENTER also includes process development and raw materials testing under close-to-production conditions. Furthermore, customers can benefit from training courses, demonstrations and mould trials in the modern application technology center. A significant trend that has become apparent in polyurethane technology in recent years is the search for new combinations of processes. In the Hennecke TECHCENTER, a range of state-of-the-art machines from highly diverse fields of PU expertise is therefore available in order to create new processes and products. Hennecke GmbH and the FSK can now look back on a conference that was successful in all aspects. The presentation of pioneering technological innovations in the form of exciting speeches and live demonstrations exceeded all the participants' expectations.
