Staedtler has won the WPC innovation award ‘Wood Plastic Composite 2009’ in for its Wopex pencil at the recent WPC Congress held in Cologne, which was attended by with 300 participants from 26 countries.

The WPC Innovation Award aims to attract the attention of the WPC industry and companies from other sectors to innovative ideas in product development and design and, consequently, to encourage the development of new, material-appropriate applications and markets for wood plastic composites (WPC).

Wopex is a natural fibre material with 70% wood which enables an efficient manufacture of pencils using co-extrusion technology. Staedtler says that Wopex is particularly ecologically efficient as it allows for a significantly higher utilisation of wood per tree from PEFC-certified, sustainably managed forests. In addition, the pencil is manufactured in a completely solvent-free production procedure, offers particularly high lead stability and break resistance and a significantly longer write-out length than comparable wood-cased pencils.