GE Plastics introduces trend-based Visualfx Portfolio

"The Peclers color and effect guide represents the voice of 1,000 customers," said Keith Dunlap, North American plastics marketing program manager for aesthetics. "It predicts consumer desires for manufacturers and designers. It answers the questions: What will be the effects and colors of tomorrow? What approach will manufacturers and designers adopt for them? What will sell?"

With insight into what will be "in" tomorrow, GE Plastics unveiled to an automotive audience during the SAE 2002 World Conference its newest Visualfx resin portfolio of effects - Enyo(TM), Lustre(TM), Glass(TM), Make-Up(TM), Smoke(TM), and Frost(TM) resins - which are formulated to inspire industrial designers to explore, think, and envision how this innovative new collection of engineering thermoplastics can help their existing and new products gain an edge in the marketplace.

Designers are already envisioning ways in which they can differentiate future products with the latest effects in the Visualfx resin portfolio. Following a sneak preview of the new effects in August at the GE Plastics Customer Innovation Center in Selkirk, N.Y., many of the 30 designers who attended offered a common observation: Seeing the range of Visualfx resin effects sparks ideas of how we can create a decorative surface with a cost-competitive molded-through resin.

The six new Visualfx resins are formulated with the color and effect inherent in the pellet to create colorful and exceptionally rich looking parts out of the mold without the need for what can often be costly secondary paint and coating operations. They are based on comprehensive trend research conducted by the Agence de Style Peclers of Paris. The new effects will extend and enhance customer choice beyond the initial Visualfx portfolio launched in 2000, which includes Ares and Sparkle effects available in a GELOY(R) acrylic-styrene-acrylonitrile (ASA) resin blend for automotive applications that need weatherable properties.