AI+ Full-Process Automation: What Insights Has This Foreign-funded Modified Materials Company Offered China?

Recently, they have made a big splash: they built a modern mixing plant in North America that represents the pinnacle of the industry in terms of "digitalization and high automation."

This company is Premix.

General Manager of Premix America CompanyIlkki Taiminenwelcomed guests attending the opening ceremony of the new conductive compounds plant in North Carolina in June. Source: Premix Oy

What caught the industry’s attention was that this new plant in Dallas, North Carolina, was backed by as much as $80 million (about RMB 580 million) in post-pandemic special funding from the U.S. government.

A Finnish company, what gives them the ability to receive such a large subsidy from the U.S. government? What "black technology" hidden in their new factory makes their competitors envious?

Today, we’ll take an in-depth look at the new digital blueprint of this conductive plastics giant.

The story still has to begin with that pandemic that swept across the globe.

During the pandemic, the global demand for medical pipettes and tips surged explosively, increasing by 3 to 5 times due to the rapid rise in nucleic acid testing and laboratory research.

At this moment, the entire medical community was shocked to discover that laboratories around the world were actually facing...No “pipes” availablean awkward predicament, with the supply chain breaking down directly and shortages lasting as long as a year.

The core compound used to produce high-quality conductive pipette tips is precisely the strategic material designated by the U.S. government as a “critical material.”

“At the time, the whole world was scrambling for what little pipette raw material there was,” recalled Jyrki Taiminen, General Manager of Premix’s U.S. business.

Amid this major supply chain turmoil, Premix, relying on the steady output of its Rajamäki plant in its home base of Finland, managed to keep delivery accuracy firmly at around 98%. Not only did its business volume double, but its reputation also spread among major global manufacturers.

With the recommendation of global major clients and the urgent need for localized supply chains by the U.S. government, Premix has naturally secured this substantial overseas factory investment.

For conductive plastics, one of the biggest pain points is consistency in quality and the prevention of metal contamination. Premix’s new plant in Dallas can be said to have taken automation and process control to the extreme.

They brought in their old partner—German extrusion equipment giant Coperion—and customized a complete turnkey project.

Coperion supplies Premix’s North Carolina plant with two ZSK twin-screw extruders, along with material handling, conveying, and feeding systems to meet high-volume production needs. Source: Coperion

If top-tier hardware can be bought with money, then Premix’s self-developed PERTTI 3.0 platform is a “moat” that competitors can never copy.

Automation is a core component of the operations at PreMix's North Carolina plant. The entire process of packaging granular composite materials for shipment is fully unmanned.

Source: Premix

This is an internal AI/machine learning platform. Premix fed all the records of thousands of compound formulations and their performance accumulated over 45 years into this AI.

In the traditional modification industry, engineers often rely on experience and continuous...Prototyping-Testing-Failure-Prototyping Againa cycle that was time-consuming and labor-intensive. But PERTTI 3.0 demonstrated a terrifying capacity for evolution:

Jyrki Taiminen proudly stated:"With PERTTI, our formula development cycle has been shortened from several months to just a few days. The speed of trial iterations, candidate screening, and pilot scale-up has been exponentially increased."

What’s even more impressive is that this is a self-evolving closed-loop system. The formulations generated by PERTTI are automatically converted into control setpoints on the production line for pilot testing; meanwhile, data collected in real time by factory sensors and laboratory test results are fed straight back into the AI database. The more data it accumulates, the smarter the AI becomes, and the more accurate its next prediction will be.

Currently, the Premix plant in the United States is focusing on mass production of high-volume PE (polyethylene) and PP (polypropylene) based conductive compounds.

"High automation + AI empowerment"The combination of these measures undoubtedly demonstrates the future development direction of modified plastics to the industry.

Premix’s new U.S. plant is equipped with storage silos both inside and outside. Source: Premix

In the past, many believed that modified plastics belonged to traditional manufacturing, relying on "secret recipes" and the experience of skilled workers.

But Premix’s case tells us:

As the world’s largest modified plastics market, China is not only competing on scale and price, but is also undergoing a major transformation toward high-end and specialty development.

How to delve deeply and thoroughly into digitization and intelligence, Premix's "hardcore operations" may provide valuable insights for Chinese modified enterprises that are currently navigating their transformation period.