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As the global plastics industry exceeds 400 million metric tons of annual production, manufacturers face pressure to maintain perfect color despite high volumes and complex formulations. Even slight color alterations can turn competitive advantage into costly failure. Learn more about the necessity of color quality consistency in plastics and how to achieve it to help your business grow and thrive.

Why Is Color Consistency Nonnegotiable in Plastics Manufacturing?

Consistent color is more than aesthetics. It directly impacts both profitability and market position in ways you can't afford to ignore:

• Brand identity and consumer perception: Visual product interactions are often the first consumer touch point. Off-putting or inconsistent product color can erode customer trust in your brand and influence purchasing from a competitor instead.
• Product quality and functionality: Color alterations can signal faulty production processes or goods and make consumers question quality and safety.
• Waste reduction and sustainability: A failure to meet customer specifications frequently results in rejects, rework, and scrap, increasing costs and undermining sustainability initiatives.
• Regulatory compliance and industry conformance: Goods that don't comply with regulations or adhere to industry standards can lead to penalties or loss of certifications.

What Are the Biggest Color Measurement Challenges Facing the Plastics Industry?

The plastics manufacturing industry faces several unique challenges in color measurement.

First, consumers and governmental agencies alike are demanding goods containing more recycled content. With increasing amounts of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) comes raw materials that contain higher levels of optical brightening agents (OBAs). 

While OBAs are essential for mitigating the effects of yellowing that occurs in processing, their blue fluorescence also creates significant issues in color formulation and consistency. Varying OBA levels in raw materials further complicate obtaining accurate and uniform results, especially across facilities receiving rPET shipments from different suppliers.

Intrinsic color is not the only factor that impacts appearance — surface texture and gloss also influence how humans perceive an object's color, as our brains process these signals simultaneously.

For example, rough or pebbled surface textures scatter light. Diffuse scattering can cause an observer to perceive the color as lighter or less saturated, since light is bouncing off at so many angles. A similar effect occurs with low-gloss plastics, creating a softer perception. Conversely, the human eye often perceives smooth-textured and high-gloss plastics as deeper and more saturated. As a result, considering gloss and texture is paramount.

When the final appearance is essential to product acceptance and success, manufacturers need accurate, objective ways to quantify it. Relying on subjective visual assessments isn't enough to meet customer and consumer demands.

What Are the Best Practices for Color Measurement in Plastics?

Achieving color accuracy and consistency in plastics demands a proactive, strategic approach. By implementing established best practices, manufacturers can optimize their color management processes to maintain a competitive advantage. 

Embrace Modern Solutions

Spectrophotometers/colorimeters are the practical answer to those outdated visual color evaluations. These devices incorporate specialized optical geometries that replicate human color perception and advanced settings that capture the influences of gloss and texture on intrinsic color.

This equipment works by analyzing representative samples of a product or raw material and translating its color properties into numerical data. Users can then compare this data to established color scores and indices to scientifically determine whether goods fall within acceptable tolerances. Measurement is fast, and readouts are more reliable for supporting quality control and process improvements.

Conspicuity is the essential function of High Visibility Safety Apparel (HVSA), protecting workers across the nation who depend on being easily seen to prevent accidents. Highway workers, construction crews, airport personnel, firefighters, and many others rely on the enhanced visibility these garments provide when performing their duties in dangerous areas with low visibility conditions.

HVSA can be important in civilian life as well, for bikers, hunters, or anyone outdoors during hunting season.

While garment manufacturers have a stake in the correct coloration of their products, in the case of HVSA, the obligation has actually been codified into law. According to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, workers performing dangerous tasks requiring conspicuity, such as roadside workers, must wear garments that conform to the requirements established in ANSI/ISEA 107-2015. The ANSI standards require that a garment’s material must be tested by an accredited laboratory and certified by the manufacturer with a Declaration of Conformity.

Without proper testing and the ability to guarantee that their HVSA meets ANSI standards, manufacturers face significant risks in sending these products to market. To remain competitive, manufacturers must invest in color quality control equipment and processes, including spectrophotometers/colorimeters.

How Do Spectrophotometers Ensure Compliance With High-Visibility Safety Standards?

Color measurement devices that ascertain the exact color of opaque materials by measuring reflected light are known as reflectance spectrophotometers. HVSA manufacturers depend on these solutions to ensure their clothing meets the color standards prescribed in ANSI 107. The extraordinary degree of color measurement accuracy offered by reflectance spectrophotometers makes them essential to determining the color of these garments and a standard part of safety testing.

ANSI/ISEA standards explicitly require the use of spectrophotometers/colorimeters for both color and colorfastness testing of HVSA. While third-party laboratories perform final certification, manufacturers must incorporate spectrophotometric measurement into their own quality control processes to ensure compliance. These devices prevent costly rejections and delays by confirming garments meet color requirements before they're submitted for certification or shipped to distributors.

Manufacturers can use modern spectrophotometers or colorimeters with dedicated color-measurement software to check how closely production colors align with their specified standards. The software expresses color as numerical values, making it easier to monitor small shade differences and document whether batches fall within defined tolerances.

You can also save standards in the device's memory, so technicians can quickly select the framework they need when testing different batches of clothing.

Measuring the color of plastic pellets is essential for ensuring color consistency and maintaining industry standards. Keep these six things in mind when determining the color of resin pellets.

1. Various Components Affect the Color of Plastic Pellets.

Resin pellets, which are often translucent, can be modified through various coloring methods to become more transparent or opaque or adopt a range of different colors. In addition to coloring techniques, overheating, molding, melting, and other production processes can influence the color and appearance of the pellets.

2. Industry Standards Promote Color Quality.

Industry standards are an essential factor to consider when measuring the color of resin pellets. These standards outline the best testing methods and the results you should expect. Implementing a color measurement system that adheres to industry standards is crucial to ensuring quality control.

3. Compliance and Acceptance Depend on Objective Color Data.

Medical, food, pharma, and auto have strict material standards. For example, medical packaging must meet stringent color requirements to ensure consumer safety. Manufacturers face severe penalties for noncompliance, in addition to the potentially high cost of any waste. Similarly, failure to meet an auto manufacturer's color specifications can lead to expensive rejections and rework requests.

HunterLab helps you meet regulations and expectations with spectrophotometers that provide objective color data to demonstrate compliance.

New polymer products continue to flood the market, and there seems to be no end to the continued growth in plastic manufacturing. In 2024, the global molded plastics market reached a value of $541.2 million. Experts predict a compound annual growth rate of 7.5% over the next decade, which means the market's value will surge to over $1 billion by 2034. In this booming market, competition with large manufacturers may seem daunting, yet small business continues to thrive.

To stay competitive among these giants, choosing the right spectrophotometer for plastics is often the difference in product efficiency and quality. Understanding the value of color measurement in plastic production is the first step toward optimizing growth and increasing sales overall.

Utilizing Spectrophotometric Instrumentation in Plastic Production

Modern spectrophotometers measure more than the tristimulus values captured by basic equipment. They offer spectral measurement capabilities and can quantify appearance by considering the influences of gloss and texture on perception. This technology makes them an ideal choice for many plastics, which often feature various shapes, textures, and opacities.

Sample types determine the right measurement techniques for accurate color data, so understanding these characteristics that drive your approach is the first step to utilizing your color measurement solutions. For example, accurate color quantification for transparent plastic preforms requires measuring via transmission, while opaque plastics require reflectance measurements.

The device’s geometry is also critical to ensure accurate appearance data capture. A directional 0°/45° geometry illuminates the sample at a 0° angle, with the viewing angle set at 45°. Scientific studies show that these geometric principles provide the truest representation of visual color perception.

Today’s spectrophotometers/colorimeters are available in portable, benchtop, and in-line models, designed to monitor color variations and changes in real time, from start to finish. Even slight alterations in color can be detected easily and allow for simple changes to be made at any stage of production, saving wasted materials, time, and money. These simple tools are beneficial for efficiently and effectively creating quality products and increasing sales.

Spectrophotometric Applications in Plastic Manufacturing

The variety in plastic shapes, sizes, and colors can present color measurement challenges. Nonuniformity, gloss, shape, and size can all affect color quantification, so choosing the right solution is the first step in developing consistency and quality in polymer products.

Not only are spectrophotometers/colorimeters effective for enhancing the quality and production of molded plastics, but their versatility also extends to many other areas of plastic manufacturing. For example, even nonuniform plastic pellet samples and recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) can be accurately measured with this equipment. Doing so helps to ensure uniform and consistent pellet color, which is used in extrusion and injection molding and directly affects final color quality.

Other spectrophotometric applications in plastics processing include quantifying color data in:

• Opaque plastic enclosures
• Opaque plastic plaques
• Opaque plastic films
• Opaque sheet plastic
• UltraDark plastics, such as deep blues, dark charcoal grays, indigos, and blacks
• Vinyl siding

From the beginning stages of plastic production to the final stages of color analysis in sample plaques, spectrophotometry ensures consistency throughout every step of manufacturing. The simplicity and accuracy of today’s advanced instrumentation take the guesswork out of the process, increasing both production and quality overall.

Powdered sugar is used in kitchens everywhere, creating smooth icing for sugar cookies or adding the finishing touches to a funnel cake. Regardless of what it is used for, customers expect powdered sugar to look a certain way — a white, finely ground powder.

To ensure your powdered sugar product stays up to industry and quality standards, follow these best practices.

Match Color Consistency of Powdered Sugar

The traditional white powder is the ideal appearance people think of with powdered sugar. If a customer opens a bag to discover a different-color powder, they may immediately assume the sugar has gone bad, even if it hasn't.

Color has both practical and psychological impacts, and keeping with color consistency acts as a sign of quality for many foods and ingredients, including powdered sugar. The pure white look of powdered sugar helps consumers feel safe using it in all their baked goods while being able to easily tell if it spoils.

Brown sugar is thicker and darker than white sugar, giving recipes a caramel-like flavor and chewy texture. However, before you mix it into your cookie dough or next bowl of oatmeal, its color must be measured for industry standards.

The International Commission for Uniform Methods of Sugar Analysis (ICUMSA) provides a color chart that helps create consistency between all brown sugar products. Measuring the color of your brown sugar product with this scale can help you better understand and meet industry quality requirements.

Using a Spectrophotometer for Brown Sugar Color Measurement

Sugar concentration and UV absorbency are primary factors in measuring sugar color. The best way to find accurate measurements of these values is with a spectrophotometer.

A spectrophotometer discovers a sugar's light absorption levels with light intensity. The UV light will either reflect off or pass through the sample, measuring the brown sugar's exact color and quality.

The color of shortening may not be something many casual bakers consider, but as a manufacturer, it's your job to ensure a consistent color for anyone who needs it. HunterLab is here to help you make your choice in quality color measurement solutions for shortening.

Understand the Differences in Types of Shortening

When measuring the color of anything, one of the most important things is to ensure you're comparing the color to other foods that are meant to be exactly the same. So when you're measuring shortening, make sure you know which type of shortening you're measuring. There are four types of shortening:

• Solid: This is the most common type of shortening, usually bought in cans or sticks like butter. It's meant for bread-based recipes like cake and pastries.
• Liquid: When solid shortening melts, it becomes liquid shortening. It can also be used for cakes, but it finds better uses in frying.
• All-purpose: All-purpose shortening does not use emulsifiers.
• Cake/icing: Cake shortening uses emulsifiers to help maintain moisture in finished products.