Liquid Color

General Information
There are several methods of providing color to the plastic resin, such as dry color, pre-colored resin, and pre-dispersed concentrated colorants. The latter ones are available in two commonly used forms: color concentrates and liquid colorants. Both are custom-prepared blends of pigments, carriers (vehicles), dispersion aids and various additives. While color concentrates look like colored plastic pellets, liquid colorants are viscous, free-flowing dispersions of pigments in polymer-compatible carriers.

Liquid colorants generally provide:

• Better color consistency due to more precise metering of the color
• Higher letdown ratios (in some cases as high as 1000/1)
• Better thermal stability due to the fact that manufacturing of liquid colorants does not involve heating of the material
• Versatility in formulation: liquid systems can incorporate both solid and liquid additives
• Reduction in required storage space

Our products are used in variety of applications, such as:

• Home and Garden
• Toys
• Personal Care
• Housewares
• Sports/ Recreation
• Packaging, including beverage bottles
• Appliances
• Graphic Arts, etc

Liquid colorants are used to color most commercial thermoplastics, processed by means of extrusion, injection - and blow molding (as well as by less conventional processes). When properly formulated, liquid systems are not just compatible with the base resin, but frequently improve the process and/or performance properties of plastic parts. In the manufacture of the liquid colorants we utilize the "total systems approach", i.e. taking into consideration not only desired shade, but chemistry of the base resin, process considerations, and expected level of performance of the plastic parts.

Specific Product Categories
Most of our products are formulated to the customers' specifications; however, we can identify several "product lines":

	Commodity colorants are formulated to maximize savings without sacrificing processability and cosmetic appearance of the parts. These products afford the processor best economics of color and are most suitable for mass manufacture of volume parts, e.g. housewares, disposable goods, toys, etc.
	Colorants for outdoor use are designed to meet the requirements of lawn and garden, toy and recreation industries. Our materials provide bright durable colors as well as protect the resin from destructive influence of the sunlight.
	Hi-performance colorants are designed to meet the most stringent requirements on heat stability and light fastness of the colored parts. These are used when application demands extended exposures to the sunlight and/ or unusually high process temperatures.
	Special effect colorants, such as fluorescent, phosphorescent, pearlescent, non- dispersing, etc are available for the applications where unconventional appearance is dictated by design of the parts. These can be formulated for most commercial thermoplastics.
	Transparent colorants are used for transparent resins, such as SAN, GPPS, PVC, ABS, P/P Clarified, PET, acrylic, etc. Our products feature high letdown ratio (1000/1 in some cases), excellent dispersibility and economics.
	Colorants for engineering resins, such as ABS, PET, PA (Nylon), PC, etc. Our products withstand rigorous processing conditions that are necessary to form these resins without changing parts' performance.
	Colorants for PET bottle manufacturing, a line recently introduced by Riverdale Color. These products impart the desired shade to the bottles (e.g., green, blue, amber), and do not alter flow properties of the resin (Intrinsic Viscosity). These products are formulated for use in applications requiring FDA approval, such as beverage bottles, as well as for other types of packaging.