Dow and Milliken Collaborate on New Agility NX Clarified PP Resins

These new resins are suitable for clear, injection-molded food and consumer storage containers, thin-wall retail food packaging and other demanding consumer goods applications.

3/23/2011 --- The Dow Chemical Company and Milliken & Company have announced the launch of Agility NX clear polypropylene (PP) resins, a next-generation family of PP offering excellent aesthetics, excellent functionality and enhanced operational efficiencies for greater impact on the sustainability profile of PP. The announcement was made at the 2011 International Home & Housewares Show in Chicago.

The new Agility NX resins bring together Dow’s breakthrough polymer design and production capabilities for random copolymer PP resins with Milliken’s innovative Millad NX 8000 clarifying agent. These new resins are suitable for clear, injection-molded food and consumer storage containers, thin-wall retail food packaging and other demanding consumer
goods applications.

Agility NX is the first family of products in Dow’s new Agility portfolio of high-performance polyolefins, engineered to improve functionality, efficiency and aesthetics. “When two industry leaders come together to tackle a challenge, the results can be extraordinary,” says Dow’s Jason Eckel, Market Manager, Thin-wall Rigid Packaging & Housewares. “Building on a long history of open collaboration, Dow and Milliken have raised the bar for clarified polypropylene to offer consumers, retailers, converters and manufacturers exactly what they’ve been wanting. This is clearly a case where the end result is much greater than the sum of the parts.”

“The synergies between Dow’s and Milliken’s technologies have resulted in a solution that can make a measurable difference for all stakeholders, whether it’s higher quality for consumers, shelf appeal for retailers or system cost reduction for the housewares sector,” says Milliken’s Brian Burkhart, Global Marketing Manager, PP Clarifiers. “Our ongoing collaboration with Dow continues to produce improvements to polypropylene resins and deliver benefits across the
industry.”

Operational Efficiency and Reduced Eco Impact

Through a combination of Dow resin technology and Milliken Millad NX8000 properties, Agility NX resins offer converters the opportunity to run equipment at lower processing temperatures, thereby reducing energy use. The resins also process faster and release from molds more easily, allowing converters to achieve cycle time reductions by up to 10 percent or more

Clearly Improved Aesthetics

Consumer demand for clear containers and packaging is growing. The Agility NX resins offer an improvement in the clarity and color of containers and lids by combining the excellent clarifying performance of the Millad NX8000 agent with Dow resin innovations. As Eckel explains, “Agility NX offers improved shelf appeal, and that is critical to a brand’s success.”

Enhanced Functionality

With conventional material, improved efficiencies and aesthetics are typically exchanged for a reduction in durability, functionality, and design freedom. Agility NX resins break through conventional polypropylene constraints by offering resins that allow for greater efficiency and aesthetic benefits while enabling improved design freedom for lighter-weight, thin-wall
configurations that combine an excellent balance of stiffness and toughness with excellent taste and odor response.