Saudi Arabian petrochemicals and plastics producer Sabic (Riyadh; www.sabic.com) is extending the application range of its caps and closures portfolio to respond to current and future developments. On the polymer side, the Saudi group already has built a strong position in PE and PP as well as engineering grades such as polycarbonate. Due to rapid changes in the market, however, Hans Pierik, leader of the global Caps and Closures segment launched at the beginning of this year, said the goal going forward is to be present across food and beverage and non-food areas alike, especially detergents, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

At a recent forum, Pierik reinforced Sabic’s emphasis on sustainability in packaging, where it is addressing several trends. Making improvements to environmental stress cracking resistance (ESCR) and physical properties such as stiffness and impact strength is aimed at enabling extra lightweighting, for example. Elsewhere, a reduction in required processing temperatures should help processors save energy and cut cycle times, while better organoleptics could help meet needs for caps that have no effect on the taste of packaging contents – especially important for bottled water.

Sabic is contributing to sustainability in other ways, Pierik said, by partially replacing crude oil with renewable feedstocks in the production of PE and PP. The properties of its partly bio-based plastics are claimed to be identical to those made from non-renewables alone.

During 2018, Pierik said the Saudi player will introduce more innovative polymer solutions, including a new multi-modal grade of HDPE with “excellent organoleptics” that makes it possible to cut weight in caps for carbonated soft drinks. The cap is said to combine excellent ESCR with good flow, thus allowing cap manufacturers to design very lightweight closures. Sabic’s “HDPE CCX027C” polymer is claimed to exhibit strong shear thinning, so that even with a relatively low melt flow index (MFI) of 0.8 g/10 min, 2.16 kg, its flow characteristics during injection moulding are similar to those of a unimodal HDPE with an MFI more than three times higher.