Enhancing Plastics with Color

Colorants for plastics can help your product to be picked up by a time-starved consumer who is flooded with choice. At the K 2019 show in Düsseldorf (October 16-23, Hall 6/A27), our broad palette of color options will showcase how we are committed to color through our KeyPlast® and KeyPlast RESIST™ colorants and the ClearTint™ line.

These types of solutions are essential in an age where color is more central to branding than ever before. After all, try to imagine how dull and monotonous a world without color would be. Our eyes are constantly being drawn to the most vibrant colorful objects, inspiring our choices and decision making.

Even if all the industry tests show that it provides the best and most economical wash, how do you make sure that your detergent is picked up by consumers flooded with dozens of bottles to choose from? And what about toy producers looking to catch a little one’s eye (and ultimately that of their parents) amid a multitude of competing products? The last thing you want is for your product to be lost in the noise due to a lack of attention to color branding.

Evolving color preferences

As color preferences evolve, as with other new product development trends, having an ear and eye to the ground is important. For example, Pantone’s Color of the Year predictions can serve as inspiration for product design in industries as diverse as furniture, automotive and even food. Pantone Living Coral (2019) succeeded Ultra Violet (2018) as the color of choice for this year, with new product developers forced to respond.

But the plastics industry itself is also keen to demonstrate its true colors.

Milliken’s ColorDirection 2020 report presents six new colors for plastics, detergents and foam for household consumer products under the theme of “Connected Comfort.” Choices in the 2020 color palette are: Terra Mundo, First:Love, Purple Dreaming, Planet Green Relaxing Blue, and Green Dawn. The vibrant choices reflect convenience, flexibility and personal experiences, capturing the connection that color creates between products and their target consumers.

Colorant solutions to meet market challenges

Enhancing plastics with color will be among our major themes at the K 2019 show in Düsseldorf. Plastic converters are asking for solutions that offer consistency and stability, while remaining on trend and that we can deliver.

Great color choice can turn an ordinary product into something special. This is why we produce a wide range of high-purity, vibrant KeyPlast colorants that meet their economic and performance needs. By bringing purity, consistency and traceability, these additives can help a brand to protect its all-important image. The stable and reproducible colorants can be used in anything from PET for transparent, food-contact applications, to toys and high heat technical applications.

But great colors require more than just vibrancy. Color consistency and stability must be upheld, without ever compromising on safety. Performance also plays an important role as some electrical, automotive and industrial applications can be demanding. Colorants such as KeyPlast RESIST™ were developed specifically to withstand extreme conditions such as high temperatures and weatherability without losing their stability properties.

Transparency combined with color is another challenge plastics producers are facing in consistently achieving ultimate clarity with colors that don’t look faded or blotched. Incorporating ClearTint non-nucleating polymeric colorants into the mix could be a possible solution to achieve vivid, transparent color in clarified PP. It works with injection molding, blow molding and thermoforming processes and is used in packaging, bottles, appliances and housewares.

Working with a combination of additives can also help you achieve your color goals. For example, ClearTint colorants can be combined with NX® UltraClear™ PP, which is made with Milliken’s Millad® NX® 8000 clarifier (also on display at K 2019) to obtain the attractiveness of clarity with the superior aesthetics of non-nucleating polymeric colorants.

Enhancing with color

There has never been a greater choice for consumers and getting your product to stand out is increasingly challenging. Enhancing plastics with color through solutions such as KeyPlast and ClearTint is the first step to gaining your next brand loyal repeat customer.

We look forward to demonstrating how to truly enhance plastics with great color and much more at K 2019.