Growing Demand for Personal Vehicles Across the Globe Driving Masterbatches

Masterbatch is mainly used for imparting color and other essential performance characteristics to engineering plastics used in many industrial applications. There are constant developments taking place in the masterbatch industry to improve light stability and surface appearance, which will increase the demand for masterbatch in many industries, especially the automotive industry.

Masterbatches are made up of polymer materials that consist of additives, carriers, pigments, or dye, which is attached to the resin with equal proportion. Increased production of plastic compounds, increased usage of packaging goods, and rapid industrialization are the key drivers for the growth of the market. Masterbatch has many ends uses, some of the key end uses are automotive, electronics & electrical, medicine packaging, textiles, food & beverage packaging, and others. 

The principal drivers of masterbatch are strong demand from the packaging and consumer goods industry, low cost production requirements for packaging, and more. Moreover, the rising demand for plastic products has escalated the masterbatch demand. 

Among many industries, the packaging is a key industry, wherein continuous innovation is needed. The demand for safe and high quality food products, along with the changes in consumer preferences have led to innovation in the development of packaging materials being used. Packaging plays a crucial role in the food industry because of its imperative advantages that helps protect the product against ill environmental effects and provides the consumer with greater ease of usability.

In 2017, the food & beverage packaging held the highest share for the masterbatch market due to the increasing demand of packaged products.

Active and intelligent packaging has earned a lot of attention of the diverse techniques present in the packaging industry. Active packaging is concerned with actively changing the product's condition by extending its shelf life or improving food while maintaining the food's quality. Intelligent packaging, on the other hand, is capable of monitoring the product, sensing the environment inside or outside the package, and communicating with the consumers. One such emerging technology that has the potential to revolutionize the packaging industry is the use of color changing plastics. This is possible only with the use of color changing masterbatches. These masterbatches can be added to standard plastics, to create a radiant and vibrant change of color, which is gauged by changes in temperature or UV light.

Automotive is another key end-use industry for masterbatch. The capability of masterbatch to manufacture lightweight plastic components is guaranteeing significant developments in fuel efficiency levels, thus intensifying the demand for masterbatch in automobile manufacturing operations. The color and additive masterbatches are widely used in the automotive industry for vehicle interiors and exteriors for heavy and light vehicles, passenger cars, as well as two and three wheelers.

In the recent past, color changing plastics can be considered one of the innovative technologies that will benefit not only consumers, but also manufacturers and regulatory bodies in assessing the product's condition. 

In the food industry, the safety, security, and quality of food products can be improved in collaboration with scientists and experts’ worldwide working on the development of this color changing plastics technique. Furthermore, consumers can benefit from the assurance that the food they buy is of good quality and safe from harmful chemicals and microorganisms. This will provide significant opportunities for growth of the masterbatch market in the coming years.