Custom

Application Engineering

Swapping out your existing plastics for a more sustainable material shouldn’t be as difficult as a mission to Mars. Some applications are unique though and require a custom material. If you’ve already tried one of our stock materials but need something more, we can work with you to craft an optimized Trifilon material that ticks all the boxes for your particular product. And while advanced material engineering sounds complicated and excessively time consuming, we’ve found that by working closely and pragmatically with our clients, we’re able to typically move into final testing within six months.

Benefits with a custom Trifilon material

  • Fine tune mechanical properties to meet specific application requirements
  • Adjust UV stability according to environmental exposure
  • Optimize shrinkage rates to fit existing tooling
  • Tune fiber loading to meet aesthetic and visual design parameters
  • Adjust haptics, material feel and scratch properties
  • Meet critical C02 and sustainability impact metrics

Lyft

Green Can

Biocomposite:

Trifilon BioLite

Sustainability Improvement:

33% less plastic

Key performance metrics:

  • Optimized elongation
    and flex
  • Migration safe according
    to food contact compliance

Lyft, which produces a no-nicotine snuff or snus, wanted to begin working with sustainable packaging materials. Their highly-designed canister required a unique, high-performance biocomposite from Trifilon. That material forms the mechanically demanding product just as well as the original plastic recipe. But the new canisters, colored green, improve sustainability metrics, like the CO2 footprint, dramatically.

The plant fibers in the biocomposite even give the canisters a desirable haptic characteristic,
a warmer and more natural feeling.

And the canisters are still recyclable in regular plastic streams. Lyft sees this material as just the first step in a journey toward more sustainable packaging.

A Custom Way Forward

If you’ve got a product in production and ambitious sustainability goals but can’t seem to find the right type of material, a Trifilon custom grade might be the answer.  We’re always open to an exploratory conversation and if we don’t think that our materials are well suited, we’re always very frank and transparent.  Feel free to reach out to us if you’d like to have a conversation around a custom Trifilon material.

In depth info on our other materials

BioLite

Combines food and kid safe polymers with plant fibers to reduce weight, improve mechanical performance and lower CO2 footprint.

Switch

Our vegan offering. All main ingredients are plant based and all grades are industrial compostable.

Revo

Upcycling recycled plastic. Our lowest C02 footprint materials created with recycled plastic with plant fibers. Aiming for a CO2-neutral footprint.