May 4, 2007 -- NaturalNano, Inc., a materials science company, has entered into a joint development agreement (JDA) with Cascade Engineering, a developer and manufacturer of plastics products. This is the second JDA that NaturalNano has announced in the second quarter of 2007.

The new partnership will center on commercializing NaturalNano's Pleximer products for a range of industries. Pleximer, a turn-key nanocomposite additive, promises a substantial impact on the properties of polymer composites, namely enabling the development of stronger, lighter materials. NaturalNano says that Pleximer is a low-cost alternative for the polymer nanocomposites market, which is the fastest growing segment of the polymer composites industry. The segment is predicted to more than double in size from $300M today to $740M by 2010.

Both NaturalNano and Cascade Engineering anticipate applications in numerous products, leading to utilization of filled halloysite nanotubes (HNT) to develop materials with functionality such as flame retardance and antimicrobial properties. The companies' joint development collaboration is an important benchmark in Pleximer's development timeline, says NaturalNano.

Over the last several months, NaturalNano demonstrated the production of polypropylene and nylon Pleximer on a pilot and manufacturing scale. The resulting materials exhibited excellent dispersion and improved the mechanical properties of the polymer. The highly concentrated Pleximer product would be added to pure polymer in the final molding process by Cascade Engineering to obtain nanocomposite materials with the desired properties for a wide-range of applications.

NaturalNano and Cascade Engineering now plan to pursue jointly developed accreditation testing, application definitions and formula optimization that will be used in the pilot and manufacturing processes to produce Pleximer-based nanocomposites for multiple polymer systems.