• Offers more choice to processors and healthcare product producers
• Broader range to include high temperature resins
• Featured at MD&M West 2016 / Pharmapack Europe 2016

Clariant, a world leader in specialty chemicals, has expanded its capacity to produce pre-colored compounds for medical devices and pharmaceutical packaging. Facilities to process high-temperature polymers are also being expanded. The products are being featured at MD&M West 2016, Anaheim, CA (booth #2248), and at Pharmapack Europe 2016 in Paris (stand #430/431). The shows are being held between February 9 and 11.

The Clariant Masterbatches business unit is known around the world as a leading supplier of color and additive concentrates or masterbatches. In the last five years, it has been gradually expanding its MEVOPUR® line of color and additive masterbatches, all of which are made from pre-tested and batch controlled ingredients that have been biologically evaluated to ISO10993 and USP <87>, <88> Class VI, and manufactured at three ‘GMP ISO 13485’ certified and dedicated production facilities located in USA, Europe and Asia.

In some applications, however, according to Steve Duckworth, Clariant’s Global Head, Healthcare Polymer Solutions, companies may prefer to use fully compounded resins – polymers with color and additives already mixed in. Clariant can supply compounds based on a wide a variety of resins. All are manufactured using the same controlled and evaluated raw materials in the same dedicated and certified plants. Batch quantities available can range from as little as 50 lbs (25 kg) up to more than 2500 lbs (1000 kg).

“In some cases,” Duckworth notes, “a pre-colored compound may be preferred over a natural/uncolored resin plus concentrate because of technical difficulties with the molding process or with more ‘difficult’ resins. Clariant can give our customers both options with the assurance that the raw materials, regulatory procedures and processing steps are all controlled in the same way. This allows, for example, a medical device company to validate both concentrate and compound, giving them the flexibility to choose later the route that best meets their processing, economic and technical requirements.”

To support this offering, Clariant has recently expanded its pre-color compound-production capability at its ISO13485 sites in Lewiston, Maine in the U.S., and Singapore. In addition to the commodity resins like polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) and engineering polymers such as ABS, polycarbonate/ABS alloys and more, the Lewiston site has recently completed an investment to allow it to handle melt-processable fluoropolymers (e.g.: ETFE, FEP) in addition to its capabilities for resin such as polysulfones and polyetheretherketone (PEEK). As an example of end applications the Singapore site has recently begun developing and supplying MEVOPUR compounds and masterbatches based on polyphenylene sulphide (PPS) to a leading global company for a diagnostic application.