Plastic Colorants Play Their Role in an Unexpected Way Plastic colorants may not have the novelty of other additives, but have made remarkable progress in recent decades. "As early as 1962, Rochester and New York gathered some groups of plastic additives. We have come a long way," said Jim Figaniak, chairman of the current CAD (Color & Appearance Division) Association and president of LTL Color Compounders. " We must know our history and look forward to the future with enthusiasm."

Some new particularly sensitive application areas are the current choice of plastic colorants. “The pharmaceutical packaging industry has realized that there is a need to improve and is constantly discussing how to extract leachables from plastics, and how changes in materials can lead to accidental contamination,” said Steve Duckworth, head of Clariant's global healthcare unit. “Colorants need to address industry issues first, provide customers with the packaging they want, and try to increase their confidence in choosing a new color for packaging,” adds Duckworth.

Special colorants are very helpful to the work of medical personnel, and sometimes even in unexpected ways. For example, medical personnel working on site benefit from having extra light, especially for injured people who can quickly cut their clothing. Therefore, RTP provides a glass fiber masterbatch containing phosphorescent masterbatch, which glows in the dark, and a reinforced nylon composition for medical tools, enabling it to exert an "afterglow" of up to eight hours.

Colorants also have an important function that can be used to capture the consumer's eyeballs, distinguish it from other brands of plastic products, or create a specific user experience. In order to increase the choice of designers, colorant manufacturers are expanding their palette. Kydex, LLC, a professional manufacturer of thermoplastic sheets, introduced 64 color libraries this year to expand its standard color library in the fields of aviation, mass transit, retail, and medical care. “We recognize that color is at the heart of every design concept. What we need to do is motivate customers to change their product packaging when they see our designs,” said Jim Medalie, president of Kydex. Like this year's palette exhibition organized by other companies, this includes some cool colors with new names such as "tangent", "impulse of the storm" and "solve".

The process of colorants continues to increase, making plastic products more diverse in color. Taking the automotive industry as an example, production and coating costs account for as much as 30% of the cost of the entire automotive parts. (PolyOne) OnColor FX Smartbatch concentrates are being developed by PolyOne to concentrate on helping automotive manufacturers use more colored parts. “We understand the challenges inherent in molding colored plastic parts to meet the high standards of automotive manufacturers,” said Christoph Palm, general manager of PolyOne Pigments and Additives Europe. Color matching and persistence are long-term and complex issues. But the company has achieved some success in Europe in this area, making those that contain special effects paints like smartbatch metal to replace plastic exteriors, Palm added.

At the same time, there are many companies that are doing basic pigments like black. Shepherd Color added a new black, 10P950, Arctic infrared reflective pigment. The high solar heat reflectance of pigments is suitable for plastic applications and must resist heat buildup, which is a common problem for dark products. It is based on a brown hematite mineral pigment and has 10p950 UV stability. The company says it can be used for exterior walls, roofs, doors, windows, extrusions, and automotive interior and exterior parts.

Opposite to the opaque black is an aesthetically pleasing plastic color additive: a colorless, transparent additive developed from clarifiers. Transparency is an important reference for consumers to choose food storage containers, and the new Millad NX8000 polypropylene clarifier recently announced by Milliken underlines its transparency. Milliken also emphasized that this additive has reduced the temperature in the production process for German container manufacturers by 15%.

Color is the most intuitive feeling that an item presents to people. People's emotions can be expressed more by color. In today's fast-moving era, how products quickly grab consumers' attention with color is a huge test for every company. Colorant manufacturers are struggling to expand their color palettes, increase color libraries, and make products more diverse and rich in color. However, at the same time, how to design a favorite color is an issue that companies need to study repeatedly.

The application of colorants is very wide, it can be said to include all aspects of life, including plastic products occupy a large part. With the development of high-strength, environmentally-friendly plastics, the application of plastics is once again expanding, and the harsh and varied aesthetics of the product's appearance has also led to the continuous development of plastic colorants. Compared with foreign colorant companies' enthusiasm and efforts in the research and development of new products and new technologies, domestic enterprises are slightly lacking in this regard and still remain in the basic product field. It is believed that after experiencing the brutal baptism of the market and realizing that traditionally backward products cannot meet the needs of consumers, domestic companies will pay more and more attention to product technology research and development.