Clarifiers
Millad®
Clarifying Agents for PP
Ready to transform your plastic packaging and products? Milliken's clarifying agents are highly specialized polymer additive solutions imparting glass-like clarity to polypropylene (PP).
Milliken’s Industry-Leading Clarifying Agent Solutions
Milliken clarifying agents help PP producers and converters deliver what end-consumers are looking for, ultra-clear transparency similar to glass with the flexibility and durability of PP. Designed with precision and backed by extensive research, our clarifiers bring unparalleled transparency to your polypropylene products. Milliken’s Millad® clarifiers are used in every type of PP processing application.
Millad® Clarifiers
More than an additive, Millad® clarifying agents are a revolution in PP clarity. Milliken's portfolio of Millad® clarifier additives delivers high-performing transparency and aesthetics while enabling more efficient injection-molding and blow-molding processes.
The right additive, supported by applied scientific expertise, can help enhance recycling compatibility, reduce plastic usage in products, and enable the use of more recycled plastic.
Milliken’s global team of scientists can collaborate with you to develop solutions that advance plastic circularity.
Lightweight
Mono-material solutions
Reduce energy consumption
Replace single-use formats
End Consumer Applications
Millad® clarifiers enhance the shelf appeal of both individual and stacked parts, making PP appear brighter and cleaner. This is more important than ever as retailers and builders shift to LED lighting—which can affect the appearance of transparent PP if the right clarifying technology isn’t used. Adding Millad® clarifying agent helps provide a fresher, less yellow look under LED lights.
Millad® clarifying agents provide excellent solubility in PP, offering a high melt flow rate (MFR) that meets the growing demand for high MFR grades that support faster production. With an average of 10% energy savings certified by UL, injection-molded parts using Millad® clarifiers can display the UL Environmental Claim Validation (ECV) label.
Milliken offers Millad® clarifying agent options that help address concerns related to migration, especially in food contact applications, by reducing Specific Migration Limits (SML) without adding any new ingredients to the formulation. Millad® delivers crystal-clear transparency, enabling consumers to easily see the packaged food they buy or store. Using Millad® clarifiers can provide an average of 10% UL-certified energy savings during injection molding, making your product eligible to display the UL Environmental Claim Validation (ECV) label.
Millad® clarifying agents, tailored specifically for the extrusion blow molding (EBM) process, enable brand owners to develop clear, lightweight PP bottles with integrated handles and complex, eye-catching designs. With Millad® clarifiers, PP bottles have improved optical properties and high clarity, excellent gloss both inside and outside, lower haze, a low yellowness index, and an overall fresher appearance. Millad® clarifiers even help expand the use of PP to extrusion blow molding, a process previously limited to PVC or PET.
Millad® clarifiers deliver the highest level of clarity possible in PP, a critical characteristic required for medical syringe application. However, transparency is not the only way Millad® can help. Our clarifiers support exacting specifications for syringe production with few, if any, void defects. Millad® also exceeds syringe regulatory requirements, including those specified in the Japanese Pharmacopeia and China's Guo Biao (GB) standards. This contrasts with conventional clarifying agents that might not meet global requirements.
Millad® clarifying agents have a wide process window, enabling lower processing temperatures and increased production efficiencies. This results in lower energy and electricity usage during syringe production.
Millad® transparency agents offer excellent optical performance, good stiffness and impact balance, and more flexible processibility. Ultra-clear PP, made with Millad® clarifiers, is a cost-efficient, performance-matching alternative to polystyrene (PS). Contact us to discover how Millad® clarifying additives can enhance PP performance for various industrial applications.
PP Processing Applications
Millad® clarifying agents provide unmatched transparency for a wide range of PP products and components, and that’s just the beginning. Across the major PP production methods, Millad® can offer converters impactful operational benefits that translate to the value chain.
The Millad® platform supports two critical injection-molding processing metrics: melt flow rate (MFR) and processing temperatures. Our clarifiers have excellent solubility in PP resin with a high MFR, meeting the growing demand for high MFR grades to support faster production. In addition, Millad® clarifiers can be processed at lower temperatures without impacting optical performance. Shorter processing cycles at lower temperatures enhance injection-molding operations—decreasing cooling times and increasing production capacity.
Millad® clarifying additives expand the clarity once limited to amorphous polymers to PP, enabling PP to replace more expensive or less functional materials without impacting optical characteristics. This inter-material replacement (IMR) potential can translate to significant resource and production savings. For example, 1kg of UltraClear PP yielded almost 10% more thin-wall injection-molded lids than 1kg of polystyrene (PS). Those PP lids also weighed almost 17% less than their PS counterparts.
Thanks to Millad® clarifiers, PP can achieve clarity levels on par with polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Addressing this aesthetic characteristic means PP is a suitable alternative to PET applications and brings the added benefit of heat resistance. PP clarified with Millad®, including UltraClear PP, can be thermoformed into clear packaging components suitable for microwaving and heated use.
Sheet extrusion is a cost-effective way of producing PP sheets of varying thickness. Millad® clarifiers for PP are fully compatible with sheet extrusion processing, helping converters create crystal-clear, durable PP sheets for applications like packaging and containers.
Blow molding creates hollow plastic parts like bottles and containers. When using Millad®-clarified resin platforms, converters can deliver transparent PP parts well-suited for packaging, offering benefits like food-contact safety and durability.
Milliken has helped 70+ companies globally adopt UL Validated Label for energy savings.
Milliken additives help customers' products achieve environmental claim validation from UL solutions and use UL Environmental Claim Validation (ECV) Mark on their packaging.
This ECV mark communicates to consumers the product has been independently validated by a third party to perform in accordance with its environmental claims.
UL Solutions is a global independent safety science company offering expertise in certification, validation, testing, inspections, auditing, education and advisory services in a broad range of industries.
Contact us to get started with the certification process.
Related Products
Millad® NX® 8000
Clarifying Agents for Polypropylene
Millad NX 8000ECO
Superior clarity with sustainability benefits
Need More?
Our vast portfolio of chemical innovations enable Milliken to collaborate with our partners across the value chain to design purposeful solutions.
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