LANXESS at K 2025: Focus on additives, colorants and pigments

LANXESS will be exhibiting its comprehensive product portfolio for the plastics industry at K 2025 in Duesseldorf. From October 8 to 15, the specialty chemicals company will present diverse polymer additives, colorants and heat stable inorganic pigments for coloring plastics as well as new product developments at its booth C78 in Hall 6.

Harald Puetz, Head of Marketing for brominated and phosphorus-based flame retardants at LANXESS, says: “Polymer additives are key factors in the performance, safety, and sustainability of modern plastics. Our diverse solutions open up new opportunities for manufacturers and end customers to realize the most demanding applications with innovative, durable, and environmentally friendly materials.”

Efficient flame retardants for polymers

With its brominated and phosphorus-based solutions, LANXESS offers one of the most comprehensive ranges of organic flame retardants in the world. The polymeric and reactive flame retardants reduce the release of additives from polymers, thus contributing to environmental and health protection without compromising fire safety. Due to their high efficiency, brominated flame retardants are widely used in the construction and electronics industries. In addition to effective fire protection, phosphorus-based flame retardants offer other advantages such as good processability and high elasticity in polyurethane (PU) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) systems.

In order to support its customers, LANXESS continuously develops new sustainable solutions. Levagard 2100 for example is a next-generation, reactive flame retardant – safe, efficient, sustainable. With Levagard 2100 LANXESS customers get safer, longer-lasting, and more environmentally friendly flame retardants without compromising on fire performance. The product is specifically designed for rigid polyurethane (PUR), polyisocyanurate (PIR) foams as well as closed cell spray foams used in construction and insulation applications.

Unlike conventional additive flame retardants such as TCPP (tris (1-chloro-2-propyl) phosphate), Levagard 2100 is a low-viscosity reactive phosphonate that chemically bonds into the polymer becoming an integral part of the matrix. This reactive integration offers several key benefits: low volatility, minimal migration, lower VOC emissions and enhanced durability – thus making it a sustainable alternative for modern insulation systems. In addition, due to its low plasticizing effect the product offers improved mechanical properties. Levagard 2100 perfectly fits into the LANXESS value chain due to a full backward integration into the phosphorus-based building block produced in Germany which is used in the product and therefore offers a high supply chain resilience.

Emerald Innovation 5000 is another newly developed sustainable flame retardant designed as an alternative to decabromodiphenyl ethane (DBDPE). The product allows manufacturers and compounders to meet stringent fire safety requirements while fulfilling the latest regulatory demands in traditional and emerging markets as well.

Due to its polymeric, melt blendable characteristics, Emerald Innovation 5000 addresses the fundamental migratory issue of small molecular bromine-based flame retardant products. The product shows high permanence with low mobility when compounded into plastic resins, preventing blooming with the long-life cycle of end use cases. In addition, it enables a broad processing window and tailored physicochemical properties in a variety of engineering plastic resins.

75 years of Mesamoll: Proven phthalate-free plasticizer, continuing to shape the industry

At this year’s K Trade Fair, LANXESS celebrates a remarkable product anniversary: 75 years of Mesamoll. The phthalate-free plasticizer enables the production of flexible, durable, and long-lasting products and has shaped the global plastics industry since its inception in 1949.

From textile printing, waterbeds and stand-up paddle boards to automotive applications and sealants, Mesamoll continues to deliver performance and reliability across a wide range of applications. Its high-gelling capacity and exceptional saponification resistance allow customers to manufacture cost-efficient products with a long service-life – ensuring consumer satisfaction over decades.

Mesamoll underwent a major improvement in 2023. LANXESS transitioned to a more sustainable version by using carbon-reduced raw materials, offering its customers a reduced product carbon footprint by approximately 20 percent. This is done without compromising on quality or performance via the mass balance approach. Alongside to Mesamoll, LANXESS offers multiple other non-phthalate plasticizers in its additive portfolio.

Stabaxol product range enables hydrolysis stabilization

In order to offer more sustainable and less regulatory restrictive solutions to the customers, LANXESS is expanding its product range of hydrolysis stabilizers for plastics and polyurethanes with the addition of Stabaxol L as monomeric and Stabaxol P LF as polymeric carbodiimide, two products in a new line of innovative, low-emission carbodiimides and with no labeling.

With Stabaxol L and Stabaxol P LF, LANXESS is addressing the trend toward customized anti-hydrolysis agents that are tailor-made for use in individual applications and can thus optimally meet requirements with respect to stabilization performance, toxicology, emissions and handling.

Stabaxol L shows outstanding performance when used in polyester/polylactone polyols, thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU), other PU elastomers and polyester based polymers. In particular its use in the polyurethane and PET monofilament applications leads to an extension of the service life of the final article under moist and warm operating conditions.

Stabaxol P LF on the other hand is a label free sustainable hydrolysis stabilizer providing excellent protection against hydrolysis in ester-based thermoplastic elastomer compounds (TPE) in combination with high thermal stability, lower emission during processing. Typical applications include cable sheathing, filaments and textiles, shoe systems, rollers, engineering injection moldings and electronic housings.

Advanced color solutions for plastics

Furthermore, LANXESS will present its extensive range of high-performance colorants for the plastics industry. These solutions enable energy-efficient, direct coloration of plastic goods, eliminating the need for subsequent coating and reworking, and include both universal products and specialties tailored to demanding applications.

Colored components for high-voltage e-mobility applications

A key focus for LANXESS is on coloration solutions for plastic components used in e-mobility. A durable and highly visible orange marking is essential in many applications. In this context, LANXESS offers two complementary products that address stringent requirements: Macrolex Orange HT and Bayplast Orange TP LXS 51137.

The colorant Macrolex Orange HT allows plastics to be permanently colored in the RAL 2003 orange shade. Macrolex Orange HT is a soluble organic dye that features excellent heat stability, excellent lightfastness and weather resistance, high color strength, and remarkable brilliance. Macrolex Orange HT ensures that the coloring and thus this critical safety marking is both durable and highly visible, supporting accident prevention and compliance with industry standards.

Unlike most conventional dyes, Macrolex Orange HT is ideally suited for key engineering plastics, which often require colorants that can withstand high processing temperatures. The halogen-free dye is characterized by consistently high quality and precise color accuracy. Its high color strength also makes it a cost-efficient solution for manufacturers.

Complementing this, Bayplast Orange TP LXS 51137 (Pigment Orange 68) is also designed for use in high-voltage and other engineering plastic components like housings of outdoor power tools. This pigment solution stands out for its excellent weather resistance and exceptional durability, making it ideally suited for long-lasting outdoor and safety-relevant applications. Bayplast Orange TP LXS 51137 is particularly valued where maximum longevity and color stability under UV exposure and other extreme environmental conditions are required. Its robust properties ensure that plastic parts maintain their safety-critical orange coloration over many years, further reinforcing accident prevention and compliance in the e-mobility sector.

Macrolex Black for interior and exterior car components

In automotive applications, the Macrolex Black types offer a solution for achieving deep, piano-like black shades with exceptional gloss. These black dyes are engineered to meet the high standards of the automotive industry, providing not only intense color and excellent durability, but also enabling the production of visually striking interior and exterior car components. Their compatibility with modern recycling processes further supports sustainability goals within the automotive sector.

New high-performance solvent dye

Most recently, LANXESS has expanded the range of colorants with Macrolex Blue TP LXS 51151 (Solvent Blue 122). This organic high-performance solvent dye is ideally suited for coloring polyesters, polyester fiber and other technically demanding plastics and it meets the high-quality standards that have defined the Macrolex product range for decades.

The LANXESS’ colorant portfolio encompasses around 150 products, including Macrolex dyes, high-performance pigments, specialty colors and pigment preparations. This broad product range is designed to meet the needs of manufacturers seeking reliable, high-quality and sustainable coloration for even the most demanding applications.

Colortherm: Heat stable inorganic pigments

As the use of technical plastics in high-tech applications becomes more widespread, the requirement profile for the pigments used for coloring is also challenging. In particular, the heat stability of the colorants is becoming a decisive quality factor.

The LANXESS’ Colortherm brand features a range of synthetic red iron oxide pigments that provide much better thermal stability than comparable pigments on account of their unique production process.

LANXESS manufactures red types using its proprietary Laux process, in which the pigments are heated to up to 800°C. As a result, the micronized pigments show no visible color shift even at extremely high application temperatures and can be processed without any problems at well over 300°C.

For reliable yellow coloring of polymers, LANXESS offers the modular Colortherm Yellow product range. These special pigments are well suited for HD-PE (high density polyethylene), PS (polystyrene), ABS (acrylnitrile-butadiene styrene) or PA (polyamide), for example. They cover not only the color spectrum of light, saturated yellow shades but also orange tones.

“The special feature of our Colortherm Yellow product range is the high flexibility in pigment selection,” said Stefano Bartolucci, Global Market Segment Manager for Plastics at the Inorganic Pigments business unit at LANXESS. Depending on the type of plastic, varying levels of thermal stability are required. “In the case of coloring polyethylene, for example, it is sufficient for the pigments used merely not to exhibit any color changes at processing temperatures of around 240 °C. However, for applications using polyamide, polypropylene and polyphenylene sulfide, thermal stability of around 300 C is essential.”

LANXESS also conducts in-depth tests on the effect of pigments in polymer applications in its application technology laboratory. This enables the specialty chemicals company, for instance, to perform automated measurements of heat stability in customer-specific formulations.

Further information on LANXESS products and solutions for the plastics processing industries is available at https://lanxess.com/en/products-and-brands/industries/polymer-additives, https://lanxess.com/en/products-and-brands/industries/colorants, and https://lanxess.com/en/products-and-brands/brands/bayferrox/plastic-applications.