Plastic additives said to lower pharma packaging cycle times up to 12%

New Mevopur additives from supplier Clariant are said to give pharmaceutical packaging processors a productivity boost of up to 12% increase in production rate. In addition, these additives for polyolefins are claimed to improve stiffness, meaning processors potentially can reduce their use of plastics and save on piece cost.

Mevopur additives are said to offer pharma packaging processors multiple benefits.

Clariant, based in Muttenz, Switzerland, reports that in tests during processing of injection and injection/compression molded caps, Mevopur nucleating agents enable molders to achieve an increase in production rates of up to 12% compared to non-nucleated homopolymer polypropylene (PP) and improvements compared to conventional nucleants. The cycle time reductions stem from these additives' ability to improve the rate of crystallization and the crystallization temperature versus conventional technology in homopolymer and random copolymer PP and in high- and low-density polyethylene (PE).

Mevopur nucleants can also make these polymers more rigid, without degrading impact strength, says Clariant. This allows processors to create thinner-walled part sections and generate raw material savings. In PP homopolymer the stiffness as indicated by the flexural modulus is increased by 10% and the thermal performance is boosted by 20%, as measured by heat distortion temperature.

Clariant says the nucleants have also been shown to reduce molding defects caused by anisotropic shrinkage, such as warping and sink marks.

"The Mevopur nucleant range offers pharmaceutical packaging converters two opportunities to save," says Dan-Ola Svennson, technical manager at Clariant's site in Malmo, Sweden, one of the Clariant facilities dedicated to additives for the medical device and pharmaceutical packaging industries. All Mevopur products are produced under ISO13485 at Clariant's dedicated medical sites in Malmo, Lewiston (U.S), and Singapore. "With existing tools they have the potential to gain significant cycle time savings and thereby increase productivity. New designs can benefit from the greater rigidity to design products that reduce wall sections, thereby saving raw materials and in addition potential cycle-time reductions."

These nucleating agents are biologically evaluated according to USP parts 87, 88 (Class VI) and ISO10993 parts 4, 5, 10, 11 and 18.