Press Release

February 22, 2007

HILLS, INC. ANNOUNCES NANOFIBER MELTBLOWN FABRIC

Hills, Inc. of West Melbourne, Florida, has taken another leap in driving down the size of meltblown fibers using its patented “thin plate” extrusion dies.

Hills announced submicron meltblown in 2004, and several production lines have been installed. Today, Hills confirms that it can make fibers averaging 250 nanometers in size (range 25-400nm) using high MFI polypropylene with a special die. To achieve these fine fibers at reasonable production rates, the hole count is 100hpi and up, with extremely high L/D ratios. This places meltblown in the size range that has historically required electrospinning technology.

Hills, Inc. is a world renowned manufacturer of specialty fiber extrusion equipment. Hills’ expertise is especially strong in multicomponent fiber extrusion for spunbond, meltblown, filament yarn, staple fiber, and monofilaments. The nanofiber meltblown development is an invention which sprang from their initial development of true bicomponent meltblown extrusion equipment. Other nanofiber technology is also available from Hills using their islands-in-a-sea extrusion technology, where the sea is removed in secondary processing to release tiny island fibers.

Arnold Wilkie
President