Germany-based specialty chemicals company Evonik Industries recently won a project in Egypt to cover 500km of the Cairo-Sharm El Sheikh highway (250km in each direction) with its Degaroute-branded methyl methacrylate (MMA) resins, which are used as binders in the production of durable cold plastic road markings.
The first trial for this road started in October 2018 in cooperation with local formulator, Balsam. Each of the two directions of Cairo-Sharm El Sheikh highway project has two interrupted lines extruded via Degaroute 465 and two long edge lines sprayed with Degaroute 655 with a thickness of 2.5mm on the extruded line and 600micron on the spray line. In order to avoid the heat and the exposure to the sun, the application takes place during night and in the early mornings with the completion of the entire project expected in April 2019.
Ahmed Nousser, business manager for coating and adhesive resins, Evonik Egypt, said: “We started from scratch by educating Balsam on how to formulate cold plastic roadmaking using Degaroute. At that stage, we were creating interest for this new technology in the Egyptian market; so we organized joint technical lab trainings in Germany for Balsam in addition to providing technical support locally and supervising the production trial and the commercial production.”
Degaroute has also been used at the Ismailia-Port Said and Cairo-Sokhna highways in Egypt.
Nousser said: “With the current economic reforms in the country and the Egyptian government spending heavily on roads and infrastructure, we see significant demand for Degaroute in the country.”
