Clariant Pigments, Konica Minolta & matchmycolor tie-up enable faster colour matching of polyolefin products

Clariant, a world leader in specialty chemicals, has developed a calibration database with its well known PV Fast and Graphtol pigments.

The database can easily be integrated into matchmycolor’s Colibri software and used together with the premium grade portable and bench-top spectrophotometers from Konica Minolta to colour match polyolefin articles. Unveiled at K 2016, the collaboration will benefit masterbatch producers and compounders, as well as designers and brand owners looking to ensure finished products carry exactly the same color all over the world.

The color matching service brings direct sustainability advantages to the plastics industry by reducing the traditional time- and cost-consuming sequence of creating a color calibration data set.

Clariant has provided matchmycolor and Konica Minolta with the data set of 60 organic pigments from its PV Fast and Graphtol ranges in different concentrations in high density polyethylene (HDPE), to allow fast and precise colour matching using Konica Minolta spectrophotometers. The consistently high quality pigments offer various technical properties for a wide variety of applications. The matchmycolor Colibri cloud-based software calculates colour collections centrally in seconds and the recipes are available instantly for quick access globally to consistent data. The combined expertise of Clariant, matchmycolor and Konica Minolta makes it possible to accurately match a wide range of colours, from opaque to translucent and highly-transparent shades.

With this set of data, masterbatch producers and their customers can significantly reduce the number of laboratory and testing steps normally required to replicate a color, resulting in time savings, cost- and energy-savings, and high matching rates that improve the quality of the end result.

Michael Grosskopf, Head of BU Pigments Clariant, says that the collaboration between Clariant, Konica Minolta and matchmycolor provides a turnkey solution for fast, precise and efficient colour matching; helping support a more streamlined production across the value chain. “Masterbatch producers and compounders can look forward to time and energy savings as a result of fewer colour development steps in the laboratory and in production. Plus the high matching rates ensure a consistent color match globally, supporting industry standards and the demands of global brand owners, ” he adds.