From commercial roofing and vinyl siding to residential window profiles, doors, and flexible fixtures like bathtub liners, plastic products used in building materials must do more now than ever before. Manufacturers face rising expectations for durability, safety, and sustainability — all while managing complex supply chains and regulatory standards.
The plastics manufacturing industry has responded to the demands of more extreme weather events — particularly hurricanes and heatwaves — by engineering stronger, more resilient materials. But these performance improvements start long before extrusion or molding begins. They start with raw materials handling.
Ingredient variability, dust hazards, flow inconsistencies, and manual bottlenecks all can derail efforts to produce high-quality plastic components. Fortunately, automated ingredient handling systems offer a pathway to safer, more efficient and consistent production.
Our decades of expertise working across the building and plastics manufacturing industry reveals the top challenges facing manufacturers right now. Whether you’re battling with flow challenges, humidity management, or space limitations, here are our recommended solutions so you can produce high quality parts that meet the demand for resilient building products.
Sourcing can present big problems for your final product. Even minor inconsistencies in raw materials — such as polymer resins, plasticizers, or pellets — can compromise a product’s effectiveness. In safety-critical applications, this can lead to structural failure or product recalls. Make sure your ingredient handling solution takes the supply chain into account.
Case in point: A leading safety glass film producer faced raw material variation when sourcing plastic film from multiple suppliers. AZO engineered a silo-based blending system that homogenized material at the source. The result? Five years of consistent extrusion quality, drastically reducing scrap rates and improving overall efficiency.
Many additives like polymer powders are combustible. If not properly managed, these powders could have devastating consequences for any facility or to personnel health and safety. The new NFPA 660 standard, now the consolidated benchmark for dust hazard analysis (DHA), mandates that plastic manufacturers must perform dust hazard analyses (DHAs) and implement mitigation strategies.
To meet NFPA 660, AZO systems are designed with:
These features reduce risk while also supporting compliance with OSHA and local AHJ inspections.
Each plastic material behaves differently during conveying and batching, making flow predictability essential on production lines.
AZO’s in-house lab testing simulates real-world conditions, enabling custom design for your raw materials. For example, a biodegradable plastics pellet maker needed to precisely blend powders and liquids before extrusion. We installed the AZO® MIXOMAT inline mixer to achieve powder-liquid homogeneity before extrusion in order to eliminate production downtime and ensure batch-to-batch consistency.
Many thermosetting plastics and foaming agents degrade when exposed to humidity. For products like insulation panels or structural adhesives, this can spell disaster. Imagine if weatherproofing membranes and their associated adhesives were compromised — the result could be catastrophic for the integrity of the building if a hurricane rolls through.
Counteract moisture with sealed storage and climate-controlled environments for ingredients, especially important in coastal regions where ambient humidity is persistently high. AZO’s best practices include:
Legacy plants — especially those built in the 1960s-80s — often lack the floor space, ceiling clearance, and utility access needed to support modern plastics ingredient handling systems. Retrofitting these sites introduces several challenges, including:
We’ve helped building products and plastics manufacturers lean into their current facilities’ limits with compact, modular designs without compromising performance. During a site visit, we’ll use 3D modeling to ensure everything fits around structural barriers and legacy piping. We also integrate with existing PLCS using remote I/O to avoid a complete electrical overhaul and, in some cases, no building expansion is required.
While plastics manufacturing often relies on high-volume, automated lines, manual ingredient dosing still exists in smaller operations, pilot lines, or during changeovers — and it’s a hidden source of risk. Even small inconsistencies in manually measured ingredients can compromise the quality of plastic parts, especially when working with specialty additives, foaming agents, or heat-sensitive binders. Manual processes also increase ergonomic strain and can lead to batch delays when rework or recalibration is needed.
AZO helps eliminate these inconsistencies with precision automation. For example, AZO’s gravimetric feeders and dosing systems are engineered to deliver exact quantities of powders, pellets, or liquids — even when working with hygroscopic or difficult-flowing materials. These systems are ideal for dosing flame retardants, plasticizers, or color concentrates, where uniformity is critical to end-product integrity.
Beyond accuracy, AZO systems improve operator safety by reducing the need for manual lifting, scooping, and bag dumping — tasks that slow production and tend to contribute to long-term musculoskeletal strain of your employees.
AZO combines decades of plastic manufacturing industry experience with German-engineered precision. We offer:
Whether you're scaling up production or expanding your line of weather-resistant building products, AZO allows you to produce plastic products with confidence and consistency. Don’t let outdated systems, manual errors, or material variability hold you back. With AZO’s proven solutions, you can achieve reliable performance, safer operations, and scalable growth.
Contact AZO to speak with an expert about how we can tailor a solution for your plastics manufacturing process.