Nagase & Co., Ltd. has, in cooperation with their subsidiary of Nagase Chemicals, succeeded to develop resin masterbatch c compounding new organic agents which well display three functions of antimicrobial, antimold and antialgea simultaneously. This owes their invention of know-how concerning formulation of compounding two components of highly safety powder and liquid once considered extremely difficult by application of emulsification technology For first step, they will introduce this into the market with PVC masterbatch produced by this technology, and then target application to flexible plastic moldings such as wallpaper, water-contacting products, film for agriculture, etc. with sales estimation of 400 million to 500 million yen three years later. For next step, they will consider extending this to polyolefins as they think conversion being possible.

This antimicrobial, antimold and antialgea masterbatch jointly developed by Nagase & Co., Ltd. and Nagase Chemicals Co., Ltd is called "Denimas CP8" which is a transparent PVC pellet compounded by adding organic nitrogen-sulfur liquid component to zinc pyrithione powder base component.

Zinc pyrithione has long been used as direct skin-contacting ingredient for shampoo and others while organic nitrogen-sulfur ingredient shows no irritation to skin; thus both components are identified as highly safety as the results of various tests. Also this formulation contains DINP of low skin irritation as plasticizer.

It is generally said that organic shows better antimold property while inorganic does superior antimicrobial-fungicidal property when used for plastics as antimicrobial and antimold agents, and suppliers are promoting market development of these agents taking advantage of each features of organic and inorganic. On the other hand, in order to get better production efficiency, there is strong demand in the industry for a ready-made masterbatch that is excellent in both of the functions and they responded to these market needs.

Both companies have been identified effectiveness of these two agents in endowment of these two functions of antimicrobial and antimold to straight resins but they found these two components of liquid and powder display bad performance in mixing and compounding making it difficult to get stable masterbatch; and therefore, R&D groups of the both applied their emulsification technology and succeeded to breakthrough the technical obstacle.

According to tests for effectiveness on culture medium in comparison the group set PVC sheets compounded the agents with the non-additive group, they found non-additive group showed bacterial growth over whole Schale surface while they could not identified any live staphylococcus aureus after 24 hours cultivation as well as no growth of mildew, algea, and chlorella such as malted rice mildew, penicillium notatum even after 4 weeks cultivation; thus they obtained strong antimicrobial, antimold and antialgea effectiveness in the sheet group.

Flexible PVC is generally shrinking in its domestic market affected by environmental problem but for such application as end-use molding goods centering on sundries it shows firm steady demand due to surging of low-cost consciousness as well as its excellent moldability, in which Nagase find business opportunity and plan to do aggressive sales expansion.