ISCC PLUS certification

Asahi Kasei Plas­tics Sin­ga­pore Pte Ltd (APS), a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of Asahi Kasei, a diver­si­fied Japan­ese multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny, acquired the wide­ly rec­og­nized inter­na­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ISCC PLUS1 for its polypheny­lene ether (PPE) as a sus­tain­able prod­uct on Sep­tem­ber 19, 2022. Pro­duc­tion of PPE using bio­mass-derived raw mate­r­i­al is sched­uled to begin in Jan­u­ary 2023.PPE is an engi­neer­ing plas­tic that is blend­ed with oth­er resins such as poly­styrene and polyamide to form mod­i­fied PPE (m‑PPE). Asahi Kasei’s XYRON m‑PPE is wide­ly used in auto­mo­tive parts, con­sumer elec­tron­ics, and indus­tri­al products.

XYRON fea­tures sev­er­al excel­lent char­ac­ter­is­tics which are expect­ed to dri­ve fur­ther demand growth espe­cial­ly in the field of the envi­ron­ment and ener­gy. For exam­ple, lever­ag­ing its excel­lent elec­tri­cal insu­la­tion and oth­er elec­tri­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics, XYRON is used in parts for pho­to­volta­ic pow­er gen­er­a­tion sys­tems which oper­ate at high volt­age. These excel­lent prop­er­ties also allow prod­ucts to be made small­er, which con­tributes to resource con­ser­va­tion. XYRON is also used in com­po­nents of bat­ter­ies for elec­tric vehi­cles (EVs), which are rapid­ly becom­ing wide­spread. Its low spe­cif­ic grav­i­ty and flame-retar­dan­cy allow bat­ter­ies to be made lighter, which con­tributes to increased range and low­er CO2 emissions.

As aware­ness for the glob­al envi­ron­ment and the impor­tance of sus­tain­abil­i­ty increase, Asahi Kasei has worked to fur­ther raise the envi­ron­men­tal con­tri­bu­tion of XYRON m‑PPE by using recy­cled raw mate­r­i­al and bio­mass raw material.

Under these cir­cum­stances, Asahi Kasei and APS sought to reduce CO2 emis­sions across the sup­ply chain for XYRON m‑PPE, and in Sep­tem­ber 2022, APS became the first PPE man­u­fac­tur­er in Asia2to acquire ISCC PLUS cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion enables APS to pro­duce and sell PPE using sus­tain­able raw mate­r­i­al assigned by the mass-bal­ance method3. The pro­duc­tion start is planned for Jan­u­ary 2023.

In order to con­tribute to car­bon neu­tral­i­ty, Asahi Kasei is devel­op­ing recy­cled grades of XYRON m‑PPE which are made using recy­cled mate­r­i­al and work­ing togeth­er with cus­tomers to estab­lish a recy­cling scheme. PPE is a mate­r­i­al suit­able for recy­cling as its chem­i­cal struc­ture has excel­lent hydrol­y­sis resis­tance, which sup­press­es the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of phys­i­cal prop­er­ties. Asahi Kasei also devel­oped and patent­ed tech­nol­o­gy to extend the ser­vice life of XYRON m‑PPE, which fur­ther sup­press­es the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of phys­i­cal prop­er­ties due to recycling.

The Asahi Kasei Group aims to be a glob­al sus­tain­able part­ner for its cus­tomers by con­tribut­ing to the reduc­tion of waste and CO2 emis­sions through the assign­ment of bio­mass in the PPE of its XYRON m‑PPE by the mass-bal­ance method, the devel­op­ment of prod­ucts uti­liz­ing recy­cled mate­r­i­al, and the estab­lish­ment of a recy­cling scheme togeth­er with its customers.