The firm claims that their thermoforming grade H03TF and the injection moulding grades R25MLT and R40MLT respond to consumer desires for attractive, transparent, lightweight packaging with longer durability.
Neaz Ahmed of NATPET said that the grades would offer clarify and performance for applications in food packaging.
"Convertors want to save energy, they want transparency, stability and dimensional loading capacity, while on the end user side they want aesthetics, it is the modern lifestyle that they want to see the product inside,” he told FoodProductionDaily.com at K Show.
"We hope to provide products that are the activities of choice in daily lives, as lifestyle and aesthetic demands change we need to produce attractive items."
PP mission
NATPET manufactures solely PP grades which enables them to produce niche grades to appeal directly to specific convertors, said Ahmed.
"We are looking at targeting also existing materials and to see if they can be replaced with PP. PP is the material of choice, it has inherent characteristics such as high heat resistance and strength so it can be used to replace existing metal and non-metal.
"We are also looking into the downstream sides like compounding, soft touch and high durability areas. There is also low temperature packaging, we can maybe go to minus 20 now with PP but if we go further there are more applications."
Ahmed said the market for homopolymer grades was in China and the Pacific, rigid packaging was mostly in Europe and Africa was growing for impact and random copolymers.
He cited the examples of it replacing polystyrene and low density polyethylene (LDPE) in some blown film grades.
The firm's plant in Saudi Arabia has a production capacity of 400 KT or 50 tons per hour and they also have a head office in the country.
He added that they are planning another grade for soft touch from the outside which is expected to be available sometime next year.
Grades in action
Visitors to the K Show could see the grades in action during the show with four machine manufacturers producing parts from the grades at their booths.
Thermoforming grade H03TF combines high clarity and aesthetics with dimensional stability for thermoformed cups, trays and containers, in shallow and deep drawn parts and covering different thicknesses.
Milliken’s nucleating Hyperform HPN-600ei and the PP allow converters to realize shorter cycle times compared to conventional nucleated PP and increase the number of finished articles by minimizing wastage which can be 2-3% in conventional sites.
Hyperform HPN-600ei generates isotropic shrinkage control with a relatively high crystallization temperature to give H03TF stiffness/impact balance and strength.
At K 2013, Amut and Gabler produced thermoformed drinking cups using H03TF.
Thin-walled injection moulding
R25MLT and R40MLT are high-clarity PP grades for thin-walled packaging and injection moulded containers for food and non-food applications.
Millad NX 8000 gives converters energy and cost savings by processing the grades at lower temperatures and with shorter cycle times than similar products.
Reduced energy consumption also leads to a lower carbon footprint by reducing carbon dioxide emissions in the environment by 8-12%.
The random copolymers have a thickness of 1mm, haze value of 6% compared with 15-20% in grades containing conventional clarifiers when processed at low temperatures, which is attributable to the solubility of Millad NX 8000 in PP.
FANUC run applications based on R40MLT and injection moulder, Dr Boy produced insulin pen caps made from Teldene R25MLT at the show.