SABIC Innovative Plastics’ New Expression 2010 Palette of...

SABIC Innovative Plastics’ New Expression 2010 Palette of Colors and Effects Combines Creativity with Sustainability

Today’s product designs include an increasing focus on environmental responsibility, together with aesthetics, form and function. For its newest and most exciting Expression palette of colors, textures and effects for plastics, SABIC Innovative Plastics has chosen the theme, “Consider the future – create without paint." To contribute to air quality and enable recyclability, the Expression 2010 program gives customers new and trendy possibilities to create beautiful and functional applications using molded-in colors and effects instead of paint. Entering its third season, this highly successful program features several new ideas such as laser marking to create applications that are more easily recycled, offer new functionality and, as usual, dazzle with awesome aesthetics.

Yvette Bogaert, manager of SABIC Innovative Plastics’ European Color Innovation Center, noted, "I'm very proud of this year’s program because of its many possibilities for our customers to create recyclable applications. It feels great to know that we are doing our part to help the environment by enabling applications to go paint-free."

The main purpose of the Expression program is to spark creativity and give designers and manufacturers new options to consider. This year, the program challenges customers to combine color and materials to create new forms and functionalities while they consider the future environmental impact of products. A major advantage of Expression 2010’s solutions is recyclability. For example, a discarded water bottle becomes a colorable, laser-markable engineering thermoplastic such as Valox iQ* resin, which can be used in anything from an auto body panel to a set of chopsticks.

This year’s idea for creating exciting color possibilities focuses on the combination of complementary colors. The eight Expression 2010 offerings are: (1) Menthic green in Geloy* ASA resin; (2) Blushing Red in Lexan* polycarbonate (PC) resin; (3) Maronic taupe in Valox* polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) resin; (4) Pottery gray in Noryl* resin; (5) Freshness yellow in Lexan resin; (6) Fandango lavender in Xylex* alloy resin; (7) Lagoona blue in Lexan SLX resin; and (8) Tangerine orange in Lexan resin. Effects include diamond, luster and low gloss.