Thermoforming

Borealis has a full range of polypropylene (PP) products for thermoforming that offer excellent processing behaviour. These materials have been specially designed to meet the needs of the entire value chain in the thermoforming food and medical packaging industry.

Thermoforming is an important and growing application for polypropylene. The process is used for producing rigid food packaging (~90% of the total thermoforming market) for:

• cups and trays such those for ready-made food,
• non-food packaging like displays and containers.

The basic principles of thermoforming

In the process a flat sheet of is heated up until it becomes soft and stretchable. The hot sheet is then formed (by vacuum, pressure or plug assistance or a combination thereof) into a mold.

Thermoforming process is used for producing mass parts for packaging applications, but is also used in small production campaigned large non-food parts, where injection moulding is not cost effective due to high injection-molded tools costs.

Achieving high quality end-products

Borealis delivers homopolymers with high stiffness, good clarity and high temperature resistance as well as random copolymers with excellent clarity and gloss.

We also produce heterophasic copolymers with excellent stiffness/ impact balance for low temperature applications.

Borealis also produces speciality products which include:

• Peelable seal compounds,
• Special grades for medical blisters,
• Filled compounds,
• High melt strength polypropylenes,
• Very high stiffness homopolymer,
• Soft polypropylene.