The Shepherd Color Company announces new IR Black for recycling of black plastic

It seems that the Shepherd Color’s R&D team is at it again.

‘Creating Value, Brightening Lives’ has long been the core value of The Shepherd Color Company.

The R&D Team has their pulse on the coatings and plastics industries to understand the needs of their customers: to create quality, innovative products, which bring value to not only their customers, but to the sustainability of the environment.

One such product is a cost-effective IR Black colourant for packaging that can reflect IR wavelengths in recycling sorting facilities, so these plastics may be recycled.

Black is a popular colour used for plastic packaging, which is mostly carbon black pigment.

The carbon black pigmentation absorbs the light from the emitter used in plastic sorting centers, which prevents the sensor from identifying the polymer used, so the material is then rejected and not recycled.

Shepherd Color has spent the last 40 years developing, optimising and manufacturing IR Black pigments.

Based on the new balance of properties needed for the recycling application, they were able to design, prototype and scale up an IR Black pigment to meet this new need.

This IR Black pigment advancement is Arctic® Black 10P925.

The pigment is optimised for infrared sorting of plastics and has the following characteristics:

• Jet masstone colour

• Non-magnetic

• Survives multiple extrusions

• Single pigment solution

• Widely listed on chemical registries for global supply

• Food packaging compliance in key EU market

Black 10P925 is not only excellent for coloring plastic articles used for producing, packaging and transporting food, but can be used in other coatings as well.

This new pigment is an example of Shepherd Color’s R&D expertise in developing products that provide unique tools to solve the challenges of customers in the coatings and plastics industries.