Evonik Industries, a German manufacturer of specialty chemicals, recently won a project in Egypt to cover 500 km 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, the chemicals group said in a statement.

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 2.5 mm on the extruded line and 600micron on the spray line.

The first trial for the Cairo-Sharm El Sheikh road started in October 2018

In order to avoid the heat and the exposure to the sun, the application takes place during night and in the early mornings.

The project is set for completion next April, according to the statement.

Ahmed Nousser, business manager for coating and adhesive resins, Evonik Egypt, said: “We started from scratch with educating Balsam on how to formulate cold plastic roadmaking using Degaroute. At that stage, we were developing the interest of this new technology in the Egyptian market, so we organised joint technical Lab trainings in Germany for Balsam in addition to providing technical support locally and supervising the production trial and the commercial production.”

Commenting on the project, Mohamed El Sayed, owner of Balsam, said: “Our company strategy is quality and cost-effective road safety development and we successfully achieved our strategy with Degaroute products.”

Today, Degaroute products are used in multiple locations in Egypt with Cairo-Sharm El Sheikh, Ismailia-Port Said and Cairo-Sokhna Highways being the most prominent ones.

“With the current economic reforms in the country and the Egyptian government spending heavily on roads and infrastructure, Degaroute business has significant opportunity,” Nousser said.

“Looking at the speed of this development and the magnitude of our success I have to say that I am very content. Only our team effort, Balsam on one side and the collaboration within the Evonik team in Egypt, UAE and Germany on the other did make this happen,” he added.

Evonik is active in over 100 countries around the world with more than 36,000 employees. In fiscal 2017, the enterprise generated sales of €14.4 billion and an operating profit (adjusted EBITDA) of €2.36 billion.