Lightweighting & wall reduction
Minerals can help improve the environmental impact of plastics, making them lighter yet stronger – and delivering cost savings.
Cut costs and weight with natural minerals
Lightweighting can lessen the environmental impact of plastics while helping you keep costs down. But how do you ensure your plastics stay strong and tough enough? Our minerals can help.
Calcium carbonate is a simple way to reduce density in biaxially oriented polypropylene films. Formulations like our Supercoat 70S grade promote cavitation and microvoid formation making it an excellent choice where density reduction is required.
Supercoat 70S was designed for thin-film applications, where high opacity and gloss are also required, and it maximizes mechanical performance while offering density reduction and the required optical and surface properties.
Where available*, our talc products are ideal reinforcement agents for automotive and packaging plastics, enabling you to reduce the weight of polypropylene parts. Our HAR®, Jetfine® and Steamic® range of talcs, when used at loadings of up to 40% in the formulation of the plastic, also contribute to lowering the overall carbon footprint of the end product.
In fact, talc-reinforced polymers provide such a range of benefits that they have now replaced metal or heavier thermosets and thermoplastics in many automotive applications. For instance, their use in heavy-duty tailgates, exterior body panels and modules is constantly growing. While increasing stiffness and dimensional stability, they also improve impact resistance compared to other reinforcing additives and lower the carbon footprint of the end product. Lighter parts also mean lighter vehicles that guzzle less gas and emit less CO2.
When used in polypropylene thermoformed packaging, talc products such as Mistropack improve rigidity, reduce finished product weight and lower production costs. For example, in sheet plastics, a 10% loading of Mistropack allows an 8% decrease in sheet thickness, and they’re also applicable to foamed plastic packaging.
In rigid plastics for automotive or packaging applications, Imerys talcs:
- Increase stiffness and dimensional stability
- Improve impact resistance compared to other reinforcing additives
- Lower the carbon footprint of the end product
- Lower CO2 emissions associated with heavier car parts
*Talc products are not available in the USA and Canada. Contact us for an alternative range.
