Novatec Expands the Resin Proving Ground, Its In-House Lab for Testing Drying and Conveying Claims

An $800,000 investment in moisture instrumentation, drying equipment & engineering simulation; every performance claim Novatec publishes is measured there first

BALTIMORE, MD, UNITED STATES, November 13, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Novatec, Inc. today announced an $800,000 expansion of the Resin Proving Ground, its laboratory for testing how plastics resin is dried, conveyed and protected on its way to the process. The investment adds moisture-measurement instrumentation, drying equipment and engineering simulation, and makes the lab the source for every performance claim Novatec publishes.

Twenty years of validation testing

The Resin Proving Ground was established in 2006 as Novatec’s drying technology center and has since run more than 1,000 validation tests on the resins processors run every day, from commodity materials to engineering grades such as nylon, polycarbonate and PBT.

“Processors are told a lot of things about drying and conveying, and most of it has never been measured,” said Conrad Bessemer, CEO and CTO of Novatec. “The Resin Proving Ground exists so that when we say a dryer reaches a moisture level or a hopper delivers a certain airflow, we can show the test. We’ve been doing this work for twenty years. The difference now is the instruments, the modeling tools and the discipline of publishing what we find.”

What the expansion adds

Moisture measurement. Karl Fischer titration and loss-on-drying instruments measure residual moisture in the pellet directly, so a drying result is reported as parts per million in the resin, not inferred from a dew point reading on the dryer.

Drying and conveying equipment. New dryers, drying hoppers and conveying systems are characterized under controlled conditions, including the airflow each hopper actually delivers to the pellet bed and how heat moves through it.

Engineering simulation. ANSYS computational airflow and thermal modeling builds a digital twin of each hopper and dryer, so designs are tested in simulation before they are tested on the floor, and the two results are compared.

The lab also runs benchmark testing, evaluating equipment under identical conditions so that published comparisons rest on measured results rather than catalog ratings.

Published through the Knowledge Center

Results from the Proving Ground are published through the Novatec Knowledge Center, a library of more than 190 technical articles on resin drying, conveying and blending. Each article is co-authored by Novatec’s engineers and technical writers and carries a dated technical review by a named engineer.

“A dryer specification tells you what the equipment is rated to do,” said Kevin Shipley, Manager of the Resin Proving Ground. “We measure what it actually does, on the resin a processor is actually running, and we write down the conditions. That is the whole job of the lab.”

The Resin Proving Ground is wholly owned and funded by Novatec. The company does not claim third-party independence for the lab; its commitment is to method: direct measurement, controlled conditions and documented results. More information is at https://www.novatec.com/resin-proving-ground/.

About Novatec, Inc.

Novatec, Inc. designs and manufactures resin drying, conveying, blending and dust-collection equipment and the controls that run them, supplied as individual units or as plant-wide systems that connect every stage, protecting and enhancing plastics resin from delivery to the process. Headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, Novatec has served North American plastics processors for more than 75 years and is the largest U.S.-based manufacturer in its category. Learn more at novatec.com.

Dana Gardner
Novatec, Inc.
+1 410-789-4811
dgardner@novatec.com
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