rPET Packaging Masterbatch Selection

If you are choosing a masterbatch to run recycled PET, the suppliers will all tell you the same thing: higher recycled content, same performance. This page is a list of the questions that separate them, written from the position of someone who has just spent a week failing to verify a set of published claims.

Ask for the test, not the benefit

A benefit is "restores intrinsic viscosity". A test is "intrinsic viscosity measured by solution viscometry, on this feedstock, at this loading, against this untreated control, in this laboratory". Ask which method, which control, and whether the feed was the same material in both runs. A supplier that has run the trial has the numbers; one that has not will offer a chart with unlabeled axes.

The same applies to the properties you actually sell on. For sheet that is sag and wall distribution, for bottles top load and stress crack resistance, for fiber tenacity and broken filament rate. An additive that restores a laboratory value but not the line metric has not solved your problem.

Establish the regulatory position precisely

For food contact in the European Union, the governing text is Regulation (EU) 2022/1616. Two things follow from it that are routinely blurred in marketing.

• It authorises recycling technologies and processes, not additives. A statement that an additive is "EFSA approved" is not, on its face, a statement the regulation provides for. Ask what the claim refers to: a process authorisation held by your recycler, a food-contact compliance declaration for the additive under Regulation (EU) No 10/2011, or a supplier's own assessment.
• Your obligation is for the finished article. A compliant additive in a non-compliant recycled feed does not produce a compliant tray.

Ask for the declaration of compliance, in writing, naming the regulation and the conditions of use. If a supplier states approval and cannot produce the document, that is your answer.

Know what the additive does to the polymer

Chain extenders are not interchangeable. A branching chemistry raises melt strength, which helps sheet and film hold a shape, and hurts in spinning, where it broadens the molecular weight distribution and makes drawing uneven. A linear chemistry rebuilds chain length without building structure, which is what a filament wants. If a supplier offers one grade for everything, ask which of those it does.

Ask also what happens downstream: whether the treated material can be recycled again, whether it affects the recycler's process, and whether any residual reactive material remains in the finished part.

Cost the trial, not the pellet

The price per kilogram of masterbatch is the least useful number in the comparison. What matters is the loading, the scrap during changeover, the line speed you end up running, and how much virgin resin the additive lets you displace. A supplier that will not discuss loading cannot help you build that calculation.

What the market looks like today

Nexam Chemical publishes two PET grades, M021200 for sheet, film and thermoformed packaging and M992000 for continuous filaments and strapping, and states that the first is epoxy-free and approved for food contact by EFSA and FDA. We have not been able to confirm that status with a regulator, and the company's own application pages say "compliant" rather than "approved". It does not publish the chemistry family, a dosage range or trial data.

That is not unusual in this market; it is the reason this page is a list of questions rather than a ranking. We do not have enough verified data on any supplier to rank them, and a comparison built on marketing copy would be worse than none.

Sources

• Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/1616 on recycled plastic in food contact.
• Nexam Chemical, IV enhancer for PET and rPET.
• The related guides on thermoforming and rPET packaging.

Independent research, not affiliated with Nexam Chemical. Not technical, legal or investment advice: verify any regulatory position with your own supplier documentation.