German specialty chemicals producer Lanxess has widened production of iron oxide pigments at its Krefeld-Uerdingen site through debottlenecking.

The new capacity for the company’s Bayferrox and Colortherm brand micronized red pigments will add more than 5,000 metric t/y to the current output, which the company has not quantified.

Applications for the products are in paints and coatings industry but also in coloring of plastics. Holger Hüppeler, head of the Lanxess Inorganic Pigments business unit, points to “continuously rising demand” for high quality pigments that offer good dispersion characteristics as well as providing high color strength and color.

In its production, Lanxess uses its proprietary Laux process, in which pigments are heated to 800 °C and subsequently oxidized to red pigment.  

Since the Copperas process is no longer used on a market-relevant scale, the company said its environmentally friendly process is the only one still used that includes a calcination step at very high temperatures. The “particularly stable” pigments are claimed to have high milling stability as well as temperature stability and also show “excellent” resistance to color change.

The Inorganic Pigments business unit is part of Lanxess’s Performance Chemicals segment, which reported sales of €1.4 billion in 2017.