Borealis stacks-up benefits for pail packaging market

Borealis, a leading provider of innovative, value creating plastics solutions, has created a unique opportunity for pail packaging converters to raise productivity and increase processing efficiency while delivering pails with excellent stacking performance, high impact resistance and good aesthetics. New polypropylene BH374MO has been developed specifically to meet converter and OEM demands for high quality, cost-effective and environmentally-friendly pail materials that reduce per unit packaging weights, offer storage and transport benefits, and improve performance.

BH374MO’s higher than normal melt flow rate (MFR) of 45, achieved through its low viscosity, allows easy and fast processing with unrivalled consistency in both single and multi-cavity moulds. The resulting potential for shorter production cycles and faster processing impacts both production output and speed, with the added environmental and cost benefits of reduced energy usage.

Added to this, OEM customers can take advantage of a number of transport, storage and aesthetic benefits thanks to the material’s high stiffness, lightweight, improved strength and excellent anti-static performance.

Pail packaging is used largely in the business-to-business markets of industrial chemicals, food, catering, cosmetic and pharmaceutical products, and for water-based paint, and high-quality building and construction materials. Traditionally, both empty and filled pails are stacked one on top of another during storage and transport.

BH374MO’s high stiffness allows for thinner wall design, reducing weight and enabling the integration of new handle connection systems for superior stacking of empty pails. The outstanding strength of the new material prevents potential collapse of a pail base; a problem that can be caused by the high forces exerted by liquid contents when filled pails are stacked. This development also prevents leakage or breakage, even in the event of rough handling.

A special anti-static additive improves aesthetics by ensuring clean, dust-free packaging that retains its attractiveness over the long-term. This is of particular importance to the pail packaging sector where 80 per cent of pails are white.

BH374MO fulfils all food contact approvals and is suitable for use in food and non-food applications. Furthermore, it is a 100 per cent recyclable mono-material solution that enhances the recovery of pail packaging waste during production and at end-of-life.

Morten Augestad, Application Marketing Manager for Borealis’ Moulding Business Unit, comments on the new development: “BH374MO is the result of Borealis actively listening to the needs of all parties within the pail packaging segment. By doing so, we have succeeded in helping converters to produce more pails, more easily and cost-effectively, and at a faster rate, while providing the exceptional stacking, drop and aesthetic performance demanded by their customers. BH374MO offers clear differentiation opportunities for converters and OEMs within the pail packaging market.”