rPET Packaging Masterbatches for Thermoforming

Thermoforming is the process behind clear PET trays, cups, lids and clamshells: a sheet is heated until it softens, then drawn or pressed into a mould. It is also the process where recycled PET runs into trouble first, which is why it is the application Nexam Chemical names most often when it talks about its PET business. This page explains the problem in the terms a converter meets it, and is careful to mark which claims come from the company rather than from an independent test.

Why the melt has to hold itself up

A sheet leaving the oven has to sag in a controlled way and no further. What resists sag is melt strength, and melt strength follows molecular weight: long polymer chains entangle, short ones flow past each other. In PET, molecular weight is expressed as intrinsic viscosity, measured by dissolving the polymer and comparing how the solution flows against the pure solvent.

Recycled PET arrives at the sheet line with shorter chains than virgin resin, for reasons that are well understood chemically:

• Hydrolysis. PET is a polyester, and ester bonds are cleaved by water at processing temperature. Post-consumer flake that is washed and imperfectly dried brings that water with it.
• Thermo-oxidative scission. Every heat history, from the first bottle to this extrusion pass, breaks chains and leaves reactive end-groups that catalyze further breakdown.
• Contamination. Other polymers, adhesives, inks and colored flake in the stream add haze, and some of them accelerate degradation.

The practical symptoms are familiar on any line running high recycled content: sheet that sags unevenly between heater and mould, wall thickness that drifts, corners that stress-whiten, lids that crack at the seal.

What a reactive additive is supposed to do

A chain extender carries molecules with several reactive groups. Each one couples chain ends left behind by degradation, joining short chains back into longer ones during the extrusion pass itself, rather than in a separate solid-state step. Nexam Chemical describes its own product for this as a reactive masterbatch that gives "in-line rebuilding of polymer structure" and, on the thermoforming application page, as a masterbatch that "rebuilds polymer chains" and increases intrinsic viscosity.

The company sells two PET grades: NEXAMITE M021200, for PET sheets and films, thermoformed packaging and staple fibers, and NEXAMITE M992000, a linear grade for continuous filaments, fibers and strapping. For recycled polyethylene, a different problem in a different polymer, it sells NEXAMITE R305 and NexCircle R401.

The chemistry family is not published. Nexam states what its additive does and that it is epoxy-free, but not what it is. Anyone valuing this business is valuing a performance claim, not a disclosed molecule.

What the company claims, and how firmly

• Recycled content. On its Reactive Recycling site, Nexam says thermoformers can move from around 50% recycled content to 80% or 100% while holding sheet stability and forming performance. The same claim appears on the company's own application page.
• Food contact. The product page states that M021200 is "approved for food contact applications (EFSA & FDA)". No opinion number, authorisation number or document is given, and the company's two application pages use the weaker word "compliant" for the same grade. Note also that EFSA authorises recycling processes, not additives, so an EFSA authorisation would be a different object than approval of a masterbatch. We have not confirmed either status against a regulator.
• Dosage. The company says "low dosage" and publishes a chart of intrinsic viscosity against loading whose axis values are not readable as text. It gives no numeric dosage range for the PET grade.

What this has to do with the share price

Recycled content in packaging is no longer only a purchasing preference. From 2030, Regulation (EU) 2025/40 requires 30% recycled content in contact-sensitive PET packaging and 35% in other plastic packaging, rising to 50% and 65% in 2040, averaged per plant and per year. Those shares are below the 80% to 100% Nexam talks about, which is the point: the regulation sets a floor that pulls the whole market into the range where sheet stability becomes the binding constraint, and additive suppliers sell into that constraint.

Whether Nexam captures that demand is a separate question from whether the demand exists. The demand is in the Official Journal. The capture shows up in quarterly sales, on the financials page.

What we removed, and why

An earlier version of this page, carried over from the previous site, stated an intrinsic viscosity window for virgin and recycled sheet, an intrinsic viscosity loss per extrusion pass, a dosage range in weight percent, and extrusion temperature and residence time figures. We looked for a document behind each one: a datasheet, a standard, a paper, or a page on the manufacturer's site. We found none. Under this site's sourcing rule, a figure without a source does not go on the page, so those numbers are gone rather than repeated. If you have a datasheet or a published trial that carries them, send it to us and they come back with the citation attached.

Sources

• Nexam Chemical, IV enhancer for PET and rPET, for the grade names, the epoxy-free and food-contact claims.
• Nexam Chemical, PET thermoforming packaging, for the application description.
• Reactive Recycling, thermoformed PET sheets, for the recycled content claim. This site is operated by Nexam Chemical.
• Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 7, for the recycled content minimums.

Independent research, not affiliated with Nexam Chemical and not investment advice.