In addition to its current extensive portfolio of inorganic pigment products, specialty chemicals company LANXESS is promoting its line of new red shades at Booth 412. Marketed globally under the Bayferrox^® brand name, the new products represent a further expansion of the LANXESS Inorganic Pigments (IPG) business unit’s product portfolio, and will be manufactured using a new sustainably optimized Penniman process.

The company currently produces these new grades in a pilot plant in Germany, but beginning in 2016, they will be manufactured in the company’s new production plant in Ningbo, China. The new plant, which has been built to the latest environmental standards, is being designed for an initial synthesis capacity of more than 20,000 metric tons.

“Our new facility in China is a response to the market’s demand for environmentally friendly, sustainably produced iron oxide pigments and it underlines our commitment to remaining a reliable partner to our customers,” says Peter Baldus, Head of Inorganic Pigments Group (IPG) Americas.

At the Ningbo plant, LANXESS will for the first time employ its optimized Penniman process in which improved water treatment and waste gas purification contribute to a high level of environmental compatibility. Optimizations in the production process are also designed to significantly reduce the quantities of nitrogen oxides generated. Emissions of the greenhouse gas N₂O (nitrous oxide) will almost completely be converted by an efficient post treatment into nitrogen, water and oxygen – all naturally occurring substances.

 Compared to all currently available iron oxides, the innovative and sustainable Penniman process produces brighter and more yellowish red pigments with significantly higher L*a*b* color space values on the red axis (a*) as well as on the yellow axis (b*). No other iron oxide production process provides the option of such a flexible and precise production of color shades.