Vendor, OEM benefit from close

Packaging processor Klöckner Pentaplast Ltd. (Crumlin, Wales), a division of the Klöckner Pentaplast group (Montabaur, Germany), solved coloring problems by teaming up with an on-the-spot masterbatcher.

That was in 2000 and it says the relationship that has continued with colorants masterbatch vendor Colour Tone Masterbatch (Bedwas, Wales) has brought benefits to both parties. Color plays a big role in the Crumlin facility’s output, says managing director Giles Peacock.

“With large competition from such players as Wal-Mart coming into the UK, retailers here have taken a hard look at more creative ways of product presentation using color to give the right kind of optics as well as haptics,” Peacock says. “Not only do you need to offer an attractive price but also the best point-of-sales attraction to differentiate your product.”

Peacock has been with the company since its inception when he, Graham Johnson who is Klöckner Pentaplast Ltd. chairman, and another partner who is no long with the company, left their jobs at competitor Tenneco Packaging to start up G-PLAS in 1998, targeting food packaging thermoformed from PVC monolayer thin sheet. In two years the turnover leaped from zero to £2 million. “We wanted to grow and expand our operations further, but in 2001 we came up against the economic downturn and had problems finding adequate financing so we turned to an investor,” says Peacock. At that point Klöckner Pentaplast stepped in, then in 2003 took over complete ownership of the facility, and brought in additional equipment—a Battenfeld Extrusion (BEX, Bad Oeynhausen, Germany) extruder—to help meet growing demand.

Times are still looking rosy at the Welsh plant, which expects to process up to 57 tonnes of film this year. Total Klöckner Pentaplast group turnover should reach ?1.2 billion in 2007. The Crumlin plant has become the group’s specialist in colored PVC as well as PVC/polyethylene (PE) laminates (PE film is produced at Klöckner Pentaplast’s Portuguese facility and shipped to Wales for conversion).

In 1998 the Crumlin plant began with a single ESDE Machinentechnik (Bad Oeynhausen, Germany) co-rotating twin screw extruder, then a second line was bought to keep up with demand. But at this point the company was experiencing problems with reliable supply of colorants and additives from suppliers, difficulties associated with color exactness, and blooming. Johnson says there were also problems of plate-out on the rolls.

“Universal masterbatch just didn’t do the trick; we needed tailored recipes for specific applications,” says Peacock. The advantage of Colour Tone being located “down the road” enabled a quick response to questions and fast problem solving, which he says was very important to the success of the operations. Colour Tone was offering its polymer-specific color mastrbatch process, Vynacol, to color rigid, thin vinyl sheet for thermoforming. This free-flowing granular technology consists of two parts: a special carrier and the pigment.

Traditionally, coloring of rigid PVC is done using concentrates such as liquid colors, wax dispersions, and universal and flexible PVC-based masterbatches, which can cause screw slip and plate-out. Processors often find color distribution in rigid PVC a challenge.

“Today, branding is of top importance. Retailers like Marks & Spencers are very demanding when it comes to color precision,” Peacock says. Using Vynacol technology, Klöckner Pentaplast was able to run its extruders as the same speed as with unpigmented material. Colour Tone tailors colorant masterbatch levels to each of Klöckner Pentaplast’s three extruders.

“We can run 2-3 tonnes of pigmented PVC without problems of color variation and are very happy with the results,” he says. Color changeover, which takes about 10 minutes and results in only 50 kg of off-spec, is fast. No purging agent is needed; one just feeds natural PVC through the machine to clean it from color to color, he says.

Today Klöckner Pentaplast Ltd. uses 10 major masterbatch colors from Colour Tone although the processor has 40 different color offerings on its books. “Color is still one of the major costs in processing,” says Peacock. Masterbatches offer advantages over a color compound in their flexibility, he says.