Bitrez Ltd wins Chemicals Northwest International Trade Award 2020

Bitrez Ltd, the UK’s leading manufacturer of specialist polymers and chemicals, has won the Chemicals Northwest International Trade Award 2020 for the product Curamine.

Recognised for their ability to develop a REACH (registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals) compliant Ketamine alternative, which not only outperforms the traditional Ketamines now withdrawn from the European market, but has exports across the world which are forecasted to double in 2020.

Launched in 2017, Bitrez’s Curamine Ketamines are a grade of REACH compliant Ketamine curing agent alternatives which are characterised by their low viscosity and excellent reactivity profile.  Curamine is used in specialist coatings as it offers a long pot life (period of time which the coating or paint remands useful once opened) and rapid thin film cure (time taken for the paint or coating to dry).

Due to Curamine’s resistance to water, alkali and acids, applications include coatings for concrete, steel, marine, flooring and adhesives.

Paul Jones, Bitrez’s Managing Director, says, “We developed Curamine to combat the void in the market with the withdrawal of traditional Ketamines as they were not REACH compliant. Curamine has been supplied across the world. We have used cutting edge chemistry within our R&D labs to develop this curing agent.

“We are all very proud of this product and to be recognised by Chemicals Northwest for all the hard work is fantastic. We couldn’t have done it without the support of our customers, suppliers and exemplary staff.”

Established in 1982, Bitrez offers a range of services from R&D to toll conversion as well as technical support. Its team of highly qualified and experienced chemists can produce materials from laboratory scale through a transient pilot stage to enable scale up and allow for small scale qualification work before moving to commercial manufacture.

The awards ceremony was due to take place in March, however, due to the current pandemic, this has not been able to go ahead. The Bitrez team will receive their award in September from a member of Chemicals Northwest.