Clariant, a focused and innovative specialty chemical company, today shared with its customers a seminar hosted by its Masterbatches Business Unit on the localized solutions and innovation offered to meet the Chinese dynamic growing market demand. The seminar held at Pazhou Westin Hotel drew a highly focused audience eager to share in Clariant’s vision for “driving excellence for our future” during the leading regional plastic exhibition, ChinaPlas.
The half-day seminar focused on latest industry trends through three dedicated presentations on sustainability, Clariant’s PLASTIWARD security system and its ColorForward trend forecast. The PLASTIWARD solution presented, jointly developed by Clariant and SICPA, enables supply chain integrity with low impact on productivity and operations, and brings counterfeiting protection of plastic articles as close as possible to the end consumers by integrating taggants into target products’ polymer masterbatch, while complying with required regulations.
The participants also gained new insights on forthcoming color trends through an immersive visual experience of ColorForward 2020, the 14th edition of Clariant’s annual color forecasting guide for the plastics industry. While consumer preferences have been trending toward warmer tones in recent years, Clariant color-trend watchers see a shift to cooler blues and greens in the palette they developed for 2020. In fact, of the twenty colors in the latest edition of ColorForward, five of them are different shades of green. Some are genuine and natural looking, while others seem more artificial or ‘digital’.
To allow for more deep-dive interactivity with the participants, four dedicated break-out sessions were held, centering around the following themes:
- “Glocality”
Customers explored how Clariant is adapting a combined global/local mindset for the benefit of local customers.For example, with Clariant, they are surrounded by service, technology and expertise from the design stage to the start of production and beyond. It also has a fiber & additives masterbatches competence center in the region that can be leveraged to support customers in China.
- Innovation
Clariant shared its focus on innovation and R&D strategy as well as the latest updates on its newest innovative technologies and solutions, such as the PLASTIWARD robust in-plastics security system mentioned previously that could support the fight against counterfeit medicines and devices.
- Smart Spending
Participants learned how highly compatible liquid color solutions from Clariant, like HiFormer® liquid masterbatches, help customers deliver high productivity at a low total cost with vivid color development and increased manfucaturing efficiency.Besides, a chemical foaming agents HYDROCEROL® was also mentioned in delivering uncompromising performance through lighter products, lower engery and less waste for maufacturers.
- Sustainability
With sustainability still high on the agenda on many corporations and government agencies, this session kicked off with a deep-dive exploration on the subject, followed by discussion with participants in the group how strategies for the plastic industry can respond, in particular by implementing recycling of plastic materials and how that fits within the circular economy.
“Clariant is fully committed to providing innovative and sustainable masterbatches solutions to our customers in China. I’m glad that we are able to share with customers and guests at the seminar today how we deliver on our motto of driving excellence together with our customers for the future of the plastics industry,” said Avi Fan, Head of Clariant Business Unit Masterbatches, Greater China.