Leveraging the power of color in rigid foam

Reactint® all-liquid colorants make coloring rigid polyurethane foam easy and simple, while yielding end products that reinforce both your brand and the foam’s key performance properties. 
 
The simplest, most effective way to make your polyurethane foam stand out from competitors in a crowded field is by using color. This all-important branding technique can help consumers to identify and differentiate between types of foam, their densities and their targeted applications.  
 
Green, for example, typically is used for branding the foam as more sustainable, possibly because the formulation incorporates recycled, bio-based or other types of renewable ingredients. Red, for instance, is often used to identify the foam as fire resistant. In any case, color is an effective way to brand and differentiate rigid PU foam in the market vs. the  competition. 
 
Milliken’s Reactint® colorants allow rigid foam producers to integrate this value-added feature into their products simply, safely and cost-effectively. Additionally, Reactint has no influence on the foam’s cell structure or on its key insulation and fire-retardant properties. 
 

All liquid & highly soluble 

Reactint colorants come in a low-viscosity liquid form, so they are easy to use for rigid foam manufacturers, including those who make sandwich panels, continuous block, and boards. Color also plays an important role when it comes to prototypes and tooling.   
 
Spray foam is another application where manufacturers are leveraging color as a branding feature. In this highly competitive market, color is a way to highlight quality and performance.
 
These highly soluble products can be added for easy inline blending directly into the mix head, which contributes to short transitions, or added into the polyol tank, where Reactint mixes readily with the polyol, yielding a totally homogenous blend that does not settle over time. In doing so, the user avoids many of the troublesome manufacturing issues related to high-viscosity pigment pastes and dyes.
 
Reactint colorants also require lower dosing than pigments and are simple to clean up. They leave no residual color in pipes, pumps, tanks, and no color traces or shades in subsequent  production runs. 
 

The importance of chemical bonding 

So, what makes these colorants so special? They are fully reactive and become part of the polyurethane matrix. They do not settle over time, leading to consistent results batch to batch. And unlike pigment dispersions, they are not abrasive, do not clog filters or remain as residue in machinery parts. 
 
Now is the time to exploit the marketing and branding power of colored rigid PU foam. Use diverse shades and tints to help differentiate your products and to communicate key messages about each of them.