Charlotte:
As of today, Monsanto and OCF have zero business in carbon fiber. Monsanto is rumored to be currently sampling a carbon fiber precursor to potential customers and OCF has several high margin, high technology glass fibers which are at risk to low cost carbon fiber. As I've posted before, these are ZOLT's future competitors.
For a great discussion of the differences in acrylic fiber technology, the premier book is "Acrylic Fiber - Technology and Applications" edited by James Masson (a pioneer in the field). Another way to check is to call ZOLT and ask them 2 questions:
1. What spinning technology is your Hungarian acrylic plant based on?
2. Has any other company successfully produced a carbon fiber precursor from the same technology?
For your info, there are four ways to spin acrylic fiber:
1. Dry Spin - Dupont's technology, licensed around the world for basic acrylic production.
2. Wet Spin - the principal method for acrylic fiber, also the basis of Courtalds' carbon fiber precursor. Monsanto, Cytec, Mitsubishi, Toray, Toho use this technology for acrylic. All of the carbon fiber precursor producers use this technology except Hexcel (Toho, Toray, Mitsubishi, Asahi, Amoco, Courtalds).
3. Air gap Spin - a modification of the wet spin process to create a higher quality fiber. Most of the "new" technology carbon fiber precursors are based on this - Hexcel, Toray (for T-700), Toho (for their newer fibers).
4. Melt Spun - a Cytec developed technology for carbon fiber precursor which was sold to BASF. BASF spent millions of dollars in the late 1980s trying to perfect this and failed miserably. They subsequently sold their assets to Amoco.
You can get Masson's book through amazon.com or if you want a quicker answer, call ZOLT or a textile engineering department at a school like Georgia Tech or Clemson.
For the record, I currently hold NO position in any company in the carbon fiber industry. I really question whether the market is truly going to grow from 25 +/- million pounds today to a 100+ million pound market within a few years. I welcome anyone else's comments on the growth in applications. I would really like to hear from someone who works for a company which has ACTIVE plans to use multi-million pounds of carbon fiber per year starting soon. I have been involved in several of the applications being touted by ZOLT (and others) and I'm frankly very skeptical. Lots of talk, no purchases. The current shortage of carbon fiber has simple explanations. Aerospace demand cratered in the early 90s and several companies exited the business. Now, aerospace demand is peaking at the same time as sporting goods (mostly golf shafts). Very few new applications are driving demand. With all the expansions of capacity, I guess we'll all see.
Good luck with your investment.
Flyguy. |
