Extrusion International 6-2020

46 Extrusion International 6/2020 MATERIALS Of course, in the industry of poly- mer products, the main components of the cost of the fi nal product are the price of the main raw mate- rial – polymer, as well as the cost of processing. However, within the same region, these two components are usually the same for everyone. Therefore, it is necessary to fi nd the other variants to reduce the cost of the product and increase the margin of the business. the end product can reach 50 to 60%. Masterbatches are mostly quite ex- pensive, but they directly affect the quality. Therefore, optimization of their application is a primary task to reduce the cost of products and to adjust the fi nancial side of a polymer production generally. There are a lot of types of master- batches for polymers, depending on their functions in plastic pro- cessing. One also knows that there are a huge number of masterbatch manufacturers all over the world. At the moment, the market situation is quite dif fi cult, not only in Europe, but also all over the world. Due to the coronavirus epidemic, lockdowns of entire economies lead to the fact that markets practically do not grow in volume, and often stagnate or even decrease. Therefore, the main strategy is to trust the customer to the quality of the products at a competitive price. That’s why a few years ago, A-Len d.o.o., located in Koper, Slovenia, entered the European market with the goal of providing polymer processors with solutions aimed at optimizing the price-quality ratio of masterbatches Survival Recipe for the Market of Polymer Products – “The Best Apple from the Best Apple Trees” It is known that the polymers like polypropylene or polyethylene as they are, almost never have the prop- erties and features which allow get- ting the end product of a pure poly- mer only. All products must have a targeted geometric shape, a certain strength, and most of the products must have some color. Accordingly, various additives – masterbatches – are required for processing polymers, and the content of some of them in