DuPont and Kurz Develop New Hot Stamping Decorative Effects

Have you ever dreamed of beautifying Surlyn with a golden or metallized effect? This is today made possible thanks to the partnership between DuPont Performance Materials and LEONHARD KURZ, the world leader in hot stamping and cold transfer technology.

The innovative hot stamping foil creates new opportunities for design, colors and metallization on Surlyn. Photo via DuPont.

It took several months of research and development to meet this technological challenge. “We are constantly working on new material developments and decorative effects for Surlyn," explains Maria Carcolé, EMEA marketing leader perfumes and cosmetics at DuPont. "It takes a careful screening of the market trends and needs coupled with active collaboration along the value chain to develop innovative solutions that help leading brands create imaginative and unique packaging. In this project, hot stamping allows us to obtain a colored or metallic high-gloss decoration, which gives the cap a truly luxurious feel with outstanding tactile and surface qualities."

This technically complex project required expertise and energy from all partners. The challenge was in the development of a foil specifically suited for efficient heat marking, even at low temperatures. The technical team at DuPont Performance Materials worked with the best specialists in hot stamping technology and first carried out in-depth testing on materials with the expert support of C. Bracco EIRL.

The LEONHARD KURZ group, experienced in complex projects, took on the challenge of further developing the foil. "For us, the challenge was twofold: to obtain a good adhesion of the film at low temperatures, while retaining the high gloss of the material. After comprehensive testing under various conditions, and with precious help from DuPont, we developed a solution specifically dedicated to hot stamping of Surlyn, ensuring a perfect rendering on the material, producing excellent smoothness and surface finish. It is a small revolution that opens up unprecedented design and decoration opportunities for cosmetic brands," explains Stéphane Royère, head of business area industrial products at KURZ.

The newly developed foil offers very high bond strength and successfully passed all abrasion resistance tests. The team has worked further on developing a second version of the foil, ensuring an identical level of brilliance between the hot-stamped and un-stamped areas. "The experience and knowledge that we gained from this development are already being applied to new projects using metallized or pigmented marking films," Royère adds.

DuPont Surlyn is known for giving designers of cosmetic packaging an immense freedom of expression. With this new hot stamping development, DuPont adds to the broad range of decoration possibilities that Surlyn enables, from pure transparency and outstanding glossiness to deep pigmentation and superior metallization. Based on over 20 years of material research and the continuous introduction of innovative decoration developments, Surlyn has revolutionized the packaging of perfumes and cosmetics around the world, offering almost infinite possibilities of shapes and finishes.

"The Surlyn portfolio offers a wide palette of grades for high quality packaging to create luxurious finishes, as well as more simple and highly effective designs, including opaque and metallic renderings. Surlyn not only provides exceptional transparency for thick pieces, but also offers an extensive range of features to meet extremely varied design needs. And it is exactly this breath of new decorative effects that allows designers and brands to personalize and differentiate their packaging," Carcolé concludes.

DuPont and the KURZ group will present these developments on their respective booths at the LUXE PACK Monaco exhibition - from October 2-4, 2017.

Source: DuPont.

The preceding press release was provided by a company unaffiliated with packagePRINTING. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of packagePRINTING.