Newly Developed Transparent Bio-Plastic As An Alternative To Aluminium For Aerosols And To Heat-Set PET For Hot-Fill Applications

VELOX and SK Chemicals present ECOZEN HF, a bio-copolyester range especially suitable for the aerosol and food packaging industries

VELOX GmbH, one of Europe’s leading solution providers of raw material specialities for the plastics, composites, additives and paint & coatings industries, and its long-term partner SK Chemicals Co. Ltd. (South Korea) are presenting the next innovation for plastic packaging applications such as aerosol containers as well as cosmetic and hot fill bottles. ECOZEN HF is a newly developed bio-copolyester range that is perfectly suitable for aluminum, glass and PET replacement wherever heat and pressure resistance combined with transparency is required. First customers have already started sampling the grades.

“ECOZEN HF has similar processing requirements to PET and can be used in the same injection-stretch blow moulding (ISBM) process. However, the new grades by SK Chemicals perform perfectly in areas where PET can sometimes fail, such as in high temperature and high pressure applications”, explains François Minec, General Manager at VELOX. “For example, PET is sometimes used to produce aerosol bottles. These bottles can often fail due to high residual stress and the low temperature resistance of PET, especially in the summer months when possible leakage is the result. ECOZEN HF offers an ideal alternative here.”

Besides remarkable resistance to pressure, stress-cracking and high temperatures, ECOZEN HF is characterised by excellent transparency and easy processing. As a glass replacement, e.g. for food packaging, it not only helps to reduce weight and transportation costs but can also be used to produce hot-fill containers without the need for an expensive PET heat-setting process or the need for crystallising the bottle or jar neck. Similarly, as an aluminum substitute in the cosmetics packaging industry, ECOZEN HF combines high pressure-resistance with design flexibility and transparency. In addition, Ecozen HF is totally miscible with PET in the recycling stream.

VELOX provides the new range in nearly all European countries.