Phillips Carbon Black unveils new R&D centre at Palej

Phillips Carbon Black Limited has unveiled its state-of-the-art Sushila Goenka Research & Development Centre located in Palej, Gujarat.

The R&D centre is spread over a land area of 27,000 sqft and is planned to facilitate development of new products required by the tyre and other industries across the world and pave the way for new uses of carbon black in a growing number of areas including engineering plastics, fibres, food contact plastics, wire & cables, ink, paints, batteries and other applications. The initial investment amounts to Rs. 20 crore.

The R&D centre would be covering areas including development of new carbon black grades, primarily in specialty business, including ink, coatings and plastics, masterbatch segments, as well as customised rubber grade products through developing all-new carbon black grades and improving the performance of existing grades. Also, it will include modifications and improvement in process design, carbon black feedstock research and tracking industry trends and evolving market dynamics.

The new Sushila Goenka R&D Centre has several laboratories, such as ‘Carbon and Carbon Nano-Structure Laboratory’, ‘Carbon Functionalization Laboratory’, ‘Carbon Feedstock Research Laboratory’, ‘Interface & Colloidal Dispersion Laboratory’ and ‘Plastic Application Laboratory’.

With an installed annual capacity of 5,71,000 mtpa carbon black, the company operates four strategically located plants at Durgapur, Kochi, Mundra and Palej.

On Thursday, the stock of Philips Carbon opened at Rs. 117 per share and made an intra-day high and low of Rs. 118.85 and Rs. 113, respectively.