Page 37 - Plastics News August 2020

Toray unveils soft-touch polyester film RadiciGroup unveils Radilon® Mixloy new
A new matt-coated polyester film designed to
simplify processing and allow for soft-touch
lamination has been unveiled by Toray Plastics. By
combining a new inline coating with a PET base film,
Toray said the Lumirror STM (soft-touch matt) film
eliminated a secondary step and created a film that
was more “robust and consistent” than ordinary
offline-coated films. It added that a package
manufactured with STM film had the appearance of a
low-gloss, premium paper and a softer feel than
traditional polyester film – characteristics that were
very appealing to consumers. According to Toray,
packages made with other soft-touch products had
poor resistance to scuffing and abrasion. This meant
they can be damaged easily during transit and when
larger packages are stacked in retail environments. In
contrast, the US firm said STM film offered “excellent”
print adhesion, had no silicone transfer, and resisted
pick-off, scuffing, and abrasion. It added that the film
also offered a high, consistent coefficient of friction
that helped larger bags to stay in place when stacked.
Available in a 48 gauge, STM film is typically reverse-
printed with the matt side out and then laminated to a
sealant web, or it is extrusion-coated for the thermal
lamination market. Toray said pet food manufacturers
in particular had shown interest in the film, especially
as a solution for their larger bags. The company
claimed customers had observed that certain ordinary,
offline-coated soft-touch products were very
susceptible to damage, whereas STM film was not.
Additionally, STM film can be specified for use with
healthy snacks, nutrition bars, coffee, and other
applications.
August 2020 35
range of PA blends
o maximize polymer performance in final products
Tby mixing polymers with different properties was
the goal of RadiciGroup High Performance Polymers.
The result is its new specialty range of products with
the brand name Radilon® Mixloy. The matrix material
for these new innovative products is polyamide, the
flagship product of RadiciGroup, the only industrial
group in Europe today capable of controlling its entire
production process, from polymer chemicals to
engineering polymers, including end-of-life recycling.
Totally vertically integrated production allows the
Group to realize customer-tailored formulations and
develop innovative projects. Specifically, Radilon®
Mixloy products are made by blending polymers
readily available on the market today through a
compatibilization technology developed by the
Group, which makes naturally immiscible raw
materials miscible. “At the moment, development is
focused on certain types of alloys,” pointed out
Nicolangelo Peduto, Research and Development
manager of RadiciGroup High Performance Polymers,
“but, in the future, we plan to add other products,
with the goal of achieving properties that are simply
not attainable with individual polymers. One of our
objectives is to be able to meet the demand coming
from market niches. Furthermore, thanks to our
upstream vertically integrated polyamide production,
we have at our disposal a number of different types of
polymers that give us design freedom in formulating
the new Radilon® Mixloys.” The base materials for the
Radilon® Mixloy product offering developed so far are
PA 6, PA 6.6 and long-chain PAs, some of which are
made from bio-source materials, thus increasing the
added value of the products.
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