Sabic, a plastics and petrochemicals manufacturer based out of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in response to future and current developments is expanding the range of application of its closures and caps portfolio. The renowned Saudi company incidentally, has already established a powerful reputation across the PP and PE sectors.

Hans Pierik, global closures and Caps segment leader, claims that the company’s goal ahead, is to establish its presence in the non-food and the food and beverage domains alike, with precedence given to pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and detergents. Pierik, in a recent conference, reiterated Sabic’s commitment at achieving sustainability in packaging. One of the trends that the company is reportedly addressing in this regard is making advancements in physical attributes like impact strength and rigidness that would result in weight reduction and environmental stress cracking resistance (ESCR).

Another trend Sabic is addressing is how greater organoleptics would assist in fulfilling the demand for caps which don’t influence the packaging content’s taste – something very crucial for packaged water.

Pierik also pointed out Sabic’s other contributions to sustainability i.e. partly substituting renewable feedstocks in place of crude oil concerning the manufacturing of PP and PE. The attributes of its plastics partially bio-based are purported to be indistinguishable from those made with just non-renewables.

In 2018, Pierik stated that the Saudi company will launch more unconventional polymer solutions, which include a recently developed multi-modal grade of HDPE possessing exceptional organoleptics making it feasible to reduce weight of the carbonated soft drinks caps. The cap purported to incorporate an excellent ESCR possessing excellent flow, enabling cap producers to design vastly light closures.

HDPE CCX027C, Sabic’s polymer reportedly exhibits intense shear thinning, such that even with reasonably shallow melt flow index (MFI) - about 0.8 g/10 min, 2.16 kg, its flow characteristics while injection molding are similar to those belonging to a unimodal HDPE possessing an MFI that is three or more times higher.