The demands on household appliances and catering articles are manifold and uncompromising at the same time: They have to be stylish as well as durable, they should be easy as well as safe in usage and they have to comply to legal regulations.
With its Ultrason® portfolio, BASF offers the ideal material for stylish, durable and safe applications in the food packaging and household sectors. The Ultrason® product range comprises polyethersulfone (Ultrason® E), polysulfone (Ultrason® S), and polyphenylsulfone (Ultrason® P) - transparent, high-temperature resistant thermoplastics which keep their excellent mechanical properties and dimensional stability over a wide temperature range.
Because of their unique property profile all Ultrason® grades offer great design freedom, can easily be colored and substitute glass, metal, ceramic and porcelain. What is more: They also contribute to a sustainable lifestyle and circular economy by being reusable many times without loss in mechanical properties and design – ideal for many to-go applications and multi-cycle food packaging systems!
• Catering high-heat pans, trays,
bowls and lids
• Parts in household appliances like
coffee machines, water kettles, juicers,
food processors
• Drinking bottles for adults and babies
• Microwavable dishes
• Non-stick coating for cookware and
baking dishes
The BASF polyphenylsulfone (PPSU) can be manufactured in all state-of-the-art production methods. It can be used to produce bottles for adults but also for babies as it contains no harmful substances, is approved for food contact and has outstanding strength, chemical resistance and long-term high-temperature stability.
Bottles made from the transparent, slightly honey-colored polyphenylsulfone can easily withstand hot steam sterilization. These properties ensure that especially baby bottles made of Ultrason® P are safe to use, while being lightweight and shatter-proof.
Click here and download data sheets and publications on our Ultrason® grades for household and catering.
Materials for household and catering applications have to fulfill several requirements at once: high mechanical stability, excellent long-term service temperature resistance in hot or cold environments, sustained resistance to foods and chemicals as well as approval for food contact. The amorphous thermoplastic Ultrason® offers all this – and more:
• Temperature-independent
properties
• Very high, long-term service
temperatures
• Temperature resistance up
to 180°C (short-term up
to 220°C)
• Good dimensional stability
• High stiffness
• High mechanical strength
• Excellent hydrolysis
resistance
• Resistance to superheated
steam
• Stain resistant:
no discoloration
• Break resistant
• Very good toughness and
impact resistance
• Exceptional chemical
resistance
• Available in transparent or
colored with Colorant
Chromatics™ by Avient
• Approved for food contact
(FDA, EU)
• Odorless and tasteless
Especially in the household and catering industry the request for brilliant colors in both transparent and translucent shades as well as full-colored materials is high. BASF is cooperating with Avient Corporation to globally offer colored grades. These feature BASF’s Ultrason® as high-quality base polymer combined with Avient’s Colorant Chromatics™ high-temperature color formulation expertise for color concentrates and pre-colored solutions. The colored grades will be formulated and sold by Avient as Colorant Chromatics™ made with Ultrason® by BASF.
You want to develop colorful household appliances or catering articles with PAES? To discuss your color requirements, please contact BASF or go to Avient Design – specialized industrial designers who also understand materials and molding. We can help to simplify your entire process to accelerate time to market and create products that win with your customers.
It is now possible to produce marbled serial components made of Ultrason®. The coloring technique opens up virtually unlimited possibilities for designers to use BASF's polyarylethersulfones (PAES) to color household appliances, catering bowls and containers. For the first time, surface effects such as color shades, color streaks and patterns can be reproduced: Injection-molded parts of one series look alike but are not completely identical - for the production of one-of-a-kind parts, which at the same time benefit from the outstanding properties of Ultrason® in terms of mechanical, thermal and chemical resistance as well as approval for food contact.
For more inspiration on design with Ultrason®: visit one of the four BASF Creation Centers worldwide. Our designers, engineers and simulation experts will support you in your early product development phase - for better and faster innovation.
With Ultrason®, reusable, high-quality and stylish household and catering articles with exceptional use properties over a long life-time can be developed. These products can be reused by consumers and recirculated by caterers many times while maintaining performance and design. By this, they support a circular economy for food packaging, avoiding single-use plastics and reducing packaging waste caused by conventional catering, take-away and to-go articles. Thus, reusable catering and to-go articles made of Ultrason® can be part of a multi-cycle system that saves valuable resources and avoids packaging waste as targeted in the Single-Use Plastics EU Directive 2019/904.
Learn more in our flyer on the reusability of Ultrason® components
BASF tested the stress cracking resistance of Ultrason® to different foods, cleaning agents and care products to make sure that household and catering articles keep their quality and high performance during their entire lifetime and in different stages of usage: when in contact with food, when being cleaned and when touched in handling.
The result: Different Ultrason® grades showed no stress cracks or discoloration, thus proving that they are resistant to all tested media.
| Product | Description |
| Ultrason® E 2010 | Standard injection-molding grade of medium viscosity |
| Ultrason® E 2010 MR | Injection-molding grade of medium viscosity with improved demolding behavior for complex parts |
| Ultrason® E 3010 | Higher viscosity injection-molding and extrusion grade with improved toughness and chemical resistance (stress crack resistance) |
| Ultrason® E 3010 MR | Higher viscosity injection-molding grade with improved thoughness and chemical resistance, improved demolding behavior for complex parts |
| Ultrason® P 2010 | Low viscosity injection-molding and extrusion grade with superior toughness and chemical resistance, resistant against superheated steam |
| Ultrason® P 3010 | Medium viscosity injection-molding and extrusion grade with superior toughness and chemical resistance (stress crack resistance), resistance against superheated steam |
| Property/ Material |
PP | Copolyester | PET | PC | Amor- phous PA |
PEI | PESU Ultrason® E |
PPSU Ultrason® P |
| Optical quality, aesthetical appearance |
- milky |
++ |
++ |
++ |
++ |
- yellow |
+ Slight honey tint |
+ Slight honey tint |
| Dishwasher and detergent resistance | +/- | +/- | +/- | - | + | + | + | + |
| Microwave resistance | - | - | - | - | + | - | ++ | ++ |
| Hot steam resistance (sterilization) |
- | - | - | - | - | + | ++ | ++ |
| Mechanical properties at high temperatures | - | - | - | + | + | ++ | ++ | ++ |
- : poor +/- : acceptable + : good ++ : excellent
Find the suitable Ultrason® grade for your household and catering application in the Ultrason® Product Selector!
