Concept letter customers

Dear….

Recently information has come to us that market circumstances are changing in the supply of our raw materials. More in particular the supplier of our basis material, PVDF is under pressure due to several reasons.

At the root are a series of factors ranging from plants being shut down, the winter storm in Texas and the global shortage of shipping containers – which got thrown off their usual routes due to the pandemic. Add to that the strong economic recovery in Asia and demand for consumer goods in the U.S., and companies are at pains to secure supplies [3]. 

Specifically, availability of Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) resin material by our main supplier Solvay, besides the earlier mentioned challenges, also has been negatively impacted due to the market success of the Solvay PVDF grade specifically aimed for manufacturing of Li-Ion battery cells [7] [8]. With the EV market growing as never before, Solvay’s innovative new PVDF material provides these batteries better life-time, chemical and electrochemical resistance and high-temperature performance, increases battery energy density and streamlines manufacturing and reduces environmental footprint. Unfortunately, this growth in demand of Solvay’s new PVDF grade in this market resulted in less production capacity of Equflow’s widely applied PVDF grade of Solvay: Solef 1008.

We recently increased our stock levels of Solef 1008 to at least 12 months, so our PVDF stock guarantees your uninterrupted supply of the current material until July 2022. Future supply by Solvay is uncertain at this moment. This is the reason why we are busy investigating alternative PVDF suppliers in order to guarantee continuous delivery of your products.

We will keep you informed about market developments and our efforts to maintain an uninterrupted supply of our quality products.

Yours sincerely,

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