Here are some samples of the most common problems we hear about from bottle manufaturers trying to manage their coloring processes.

"Wonderful, another complaint from my customer for color variation in their bottles! Our wax based colorant varies throughout the lot from large flakes to fine powder, it just can't be fed uniformly, and no 2 bottles look the same."
National Accounts Manager – St. Louis, MO

"During normal bottle production, the hose coming from my peristaltic pump ruptured (again), leaving another permanent stain on my molding machine."
Injection Mold Manager – Chicago, IL

"We feed our color with volumetric feeders and continue to get bottle-to-bottle color variation because the size of my color pellets is all over the board. My color supplier says that PET colors are hard to process for them and that their hands are tied when it comes to controlling pellet size."
Process Engineer – Phoenix, AZ

"So now I have to buy cooling circulation units for all of my color feeders in order to prevent my wax based colorants from prematurely melting in the feeders. I suppose in the long run its cheaper than having to shut down to clean out the feeders every time it happens, but it's a huge expense."
Blow Molding Manager – Los Angeles, CA

"A new target customer called us in an emergency, asking if we could fill an order of colored bottles for them. We happened to have the liquid color concentrate in stock, so we committed to their tight delivery date. When we pulled the color the following night, it had completely settled out and was unusable because it had sat in our warehouse for too long. Not only did we foul up our production schedule, we have the embarrassing task of explaining to our customer why they won't get their order on time."
Production Scheduler – Boston, MA

"Can you believe that our largest customer is specifying a color concentrate that the supplier says must be pre-dried before we can use it? Now I'm going to have to go out and buy a dryer just so we can make those bottles."
Director of Purchasing- Newark, NJ

"My efficiency numbers are going to take a huge hit this week. We're running a job all week that calls for a high loading of wax based color, and screw slippage is guaranteed. We're going to have to shut down several times over the course of the week just to clean the screw!!!"
Director of Manufacturing – Fort Worth, TX

"We were training a new forklift operator, and wouldn't you know that on his 3rd day, he pierced a drum of liquid color with the fork on the truck. We lost the entire contents of the drum, and 6 manhours for the cleanup."
Warehouse Manager – Cleveland, OH

"What am I going to do with all these bottles now? Our customer just rejected the entire shipment because they failed their drop test. The PET carrier resin in the colorant has caused the IV of the bottle to fall below its acceptable level."
Quality Assurance Manager – Houston, TX

"I just had to grind up a whole truckload of bottles and sell them for scrap because of severe delamination. I simply just can't run wax based colors at high LDR's because the high amount of wax in the final bottle is not fully compatible with my PET resin."
Quality Assurance Manager – Miami, FL

"Our new accounting manager was all over me the other day, claiming that our standard accounting costs are off for a major customer that buys many different colored bottles from us. After I looked into it, we realized that we can't get all of the liquid color out of the drum, and were throwing good money away."
Materials Manager – Salt Lake City, UT

"I just spent half a shift cleaning semi-molten color concentrate out of the throat of my injection molder. I've now come to learn that I need to either buy auxiliary cooling equipment or pay to have the colorant recrystalized."
Plant Manager – Toronto, Ontario

"Get maintenance ready, we have another big job scheduled tomorrow that will run for 2 days with the same liquid color. It's a sure bet that half way through the job, we'll encounter screw slippage, and we'll have to shut down & clean the screw"
Plant Manager – Reynosa, Mexico

Pennacle®PET colorants offer solutions to many of the above scenarios The Colorant Comparison Chart offers more details. For more information contact us, or send for a brochure.