Polychim (www.polychim-industrie.com) is setting a new benchmark in the performance of homopolymer polypropylene (PP) in packaging applications with the launch of a new thermoforming PP offering excellent aesthetics, high quality and faster throughput to converters.

Polychim’s homopolymer PP grade HA31XTF draws on the unique benefits of Milliken’s (www.milliken.com) nucleating innovation, Hyperform^® HPN-600ei, to overcome the performance trade-offs associated with conventional nucleated PP homopolymers in thermoforming applications.

Hyperform HPN-600ei stimulates an improvement in the aesthetics of final parts, achieving superior transparency and reduced yellowing for thermoformed goods compared to traditional nucleated homopolymers. As a result, new grade HA31XTF outperforms Polychim’s previous conventional nucleated homopolymer for thermoforming through better haze and less yellowing.

HA31XTF offers balanced physical properties, including favorable stiffness/impact balance and isotropic shrinkage behavior that avoids warpage. The combination of Polychim’s resin technology with the high crystallization temperature and isotropic shrinkage behavior provided by Milliken’s Hyperform HPN-600ei nucleator also gives the possibility for thermoformers to improve productivity by up to 10% and reduce costs.

For converters, the package of combined benefits means an exciting new opportunity to achieve desired quality benefits plus more cost-efficient production based on faster production cycles. The grade is aimed at clear PP & opaque thermoformed applications such as food packaging.

“Through listening to our customers it became clear that there was a definite gap in the PP homopolymer market for a solution offering both better production cycle times and enhanced end-product quality,” says Bo Oxfeldt, Vice President at Beaulieu International Group and responsible for the European and North American PP business. “As a result of Polychim’s close collaboration with Milliken, we have been able to address this balance and develop an improved homopolymer PP that offers the upgrade in performance the market has been looking for.”