The company will double its production and add an additional redundant manufacturing line to ensure ample global supply of the product. This is Milliken’s most significant capital investment in its Millad clarifier business to date, underscoring the company’s continued leadership position in clarifier technology. The expansion is scheduled for completion in 2015.
“This infrastructure investment demonstrates our strong and unyielding commitment to our customers and the clarifier industry and our intention to remain a leading global player for the future,” said Allen Jacoby, vice president, Plastics Additives, Milliken & Company. “The need for a capacity expansion comes from Millad NX 8000’s success as the clarifier of choice for new, transparent polypropylene applications, from food storage to personal care packaging. Our customers can be confident that this expansion will deliver ample global supply of our high-performing Millad NX 8000 clarifier to meet their current and future needs.”
The fast adoption of the Millad NX 8000 technology over traditional clarifiers has been driven by the material’s cleaner, fresher look and inherent sustainability benefits versus competitive products. Its improved solubility enables clarified PP to be processed at cooler temperatures, thus taking advantage of higher melt flow resins. Customers using this innovative technology have experienced energy savings of up to 13 percent, cycle times accelerated up to 18 percent, and carbon emissions reduced by as much as 13 percent.
Further, the energy savings enabled by Millad NX 8000 clarifier have been validated by UL® Environment, a wholly owned subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and an independent environmental claims validation company.
Millad NX 8000 clarifying agent allows manufacturers to replace high-density resins, such as polycarbonate (PC), polystyrene (PS), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) with lower-density polypropylene to reduce costs and weight and help the environment.