Sports & Leisure

High-performance materials

Sports and leisure are an integral part of our everyday life, enhancing wellness and a balanced lifestyle. Arkema is active in both segments, offering equipment manufacturers and designers a wide range of products allowing them to combine creativity and performance, for the benefit of both professional and amateur athletes.

Comfort and Ergonomics for Sports

Light, flexible, and tough, plastics combine performance and safety and are popular with amateur and professional athletes as a key ingredient in ergonomic, comfortable equipment. Especially suited for winter and mountain sports, plastics are also used extensively for team sports, in floor coverings, equipment, and accessories. Water repellant, corrosion resistant, and malleable, they are also a good choice for sailing and other water sports.

Polyether block amide, or Pebax®, and Rilsan® polyamide are 15 to 20% lighter than competing technical polymers. Their dynamic properties make them ideal for many winter sport and mountain equipment applications, including skis, shoes, masks, and mittens.

An amazingly diverse range of PVC items are now a fixture in water sports. Examples include boots, beach footwear, coated fabric for clothing and sails.

Pebax® can be used to produce an athletic shoe sole for any challenge or setting. But other components also come into play, such as EVA Evatane® expanded copolymer foam, which acts as a shock absorber, and Azobul®, used as a blowing agent to expand foam.

Finally, the stability, lightness, and toughness of Orgalloy® polyamide alloys give a significant boost to the performance of inline skates.

Safe, Fun Leisure Through Chemistry

Safer than traditional materials and able to be made in a broad range of shapes and colors, plastics are equally popular with makers of toys and board games.

• Lacovyl® PVC’s amazing “material effect” creates realistic dolls and lends itself to all kinds of beach balls. It is also used in inflatable consumer products, such as dinghies and air mattresses.

• The total transparency of Altuglas® makes it the preferred choice for top-of-the-line games, such as chess sets and puzzles.

• Our Cross-linking Luperox® can be used in the production of shoes soles and golf ball cores. And with UPR peroxides the unsaturated Resins can be shaped to create boats and swimming pool hulls.

To learn more about how our technical polymers are used in sports and leisure, visit our Web site at ww.pebaxpowered.com