Color Masterbatch Manufacturers and Suppliers: 8 Specification Checks Before You Order

Eight color masterbatch producers are listed in this directory with verified company data, and because a colour concentrate is made to order rather than sold from a catalogue, every one of their quotes is compared on the same 8 specification items. A concentrate that is 40 to 65 wt% colorant and is dosed at 1 to 5% of your base polymer looks like a commodity in the purchase order and behaves like a custom formulation in the extruder, so what exactly is being bought?

The company answering a sourcing search for a color masterbatch supplier plays one of four roles: a colour house that disperses pigments into a carrier resin, a compounder that colours a finished compound, a distributor that resells concentrate without making it, or a pigment producer that supplies the colour house. All four rank for the same query, and only the first two make anything a converter runs with.

This directory names the eight producers and their brand lines, maps the pigment producers behind them, sets out 8 specification checks and a 10-item quote request, and carries no paid inclusion, no paid position and no ranking. Colour concentrates for paints, inks, textiles, concrete and cosmetics fall outside this border even where the chemistry is identical: this directory covers plastics only, and it is a directory, not a local listing, so the location layer further down covers headquarters and region rather than a branch near you.

Table T1. How to use this directory

Table counts describe this directory, not the industry. Paid trade directories on the same query list 67 to 100 companies; we list only companies for which at least one attribute is verified against a named source, and we rank none of them.

What Does a Color Masterbatch Supplier Actually Sell?#

A color masterbatch supplier is a company that disperses colorants into a carrier resin and sells the result as a concentrate, which means what you are buying is dispersion and colour matching, not pigment chemistry: almost every colour house buys its pigments from someone else. The word "supplier" on this query covers four distinct roles, and only two of them make anything: the colour house that formulates the concentrate and the compounder that colours a finished resin, alongside a distributor that resells without making and a pigment producer that sells the raw colorant upstream.

A colour concentrate is one delivery form among the 43 families of plastic additives, and this page starts from the company that sells it rather than from the chemistry inside it. Buying the concentrate form brings four advantages over neat pigment: accurate dosing of an expensive colorant, less airborne dust, a longer shelf life than a solvent-based system, and the option to run several concentrates together in one hopper. The carrier resin has to match the base polymer: wax works as a universal carrier, EVA or LDPE carry colour into polyolefins and polyamide, and polystyrene carries it into ABS, SAN and, at times, PC. Every delivery form a colorant can take is set out on plastic additives.

Colour House, Compounder, Distributor or Pigment Maker?#

The four roles behind a colour quote sell four different things: a dispersion, a ready-to-mould compound, a delivery service and a pigment.

• Colour house or masterbatch producer, among them Ampacet, Avient and Tosaf, disperses bought colorants into a carrier resin and sells the concentrate by let-down ratio.
• Compounder that also colours, such as Teknor Apex, which supplies vinyl compounds, TPE, engineering thermoplastics, colorants and masterbatch from Pawtucket, Rhode Island and 15 further locations, delivers a finished compound with the colour already built in.
• Distributor, among them Brenntag, Univar Solutions, IMCD, Azelis, Biesterfeld and DKSH, buys, stores, repacks and resells the concentrate without making it.
• Pigment producer, including Sun Chemical, Sudarshan, Lanxess, Cabot and Chemours, sells the colorant itself, usually to the colour house rather than to the converter.

What changes in the quote depends on which role answers it. A concentrate is sold by let-down ratio, so a price per kilogram of concentrate is never comparable with a price per kilogram of neat pigment until it is divided by the let-down; the arithmetic and both conventions are worked through on the masterbatch entry. Buying through a distributor changes delivery timing, not the colour itself, and the distributor's own scope is profiled separately as plastic additive distributors.

Why a Color Masterbatch Has No Comparable Catalogue Price#

A colour concentrate is quoted rather than listed because three of its variables belong to your part and not to the supplier's catalogue: the colorant loading in the pellet, the let-down ratio you will run and the carrier that has to match your base polymer. This is what separates a color masterbatch quote from an off-the-shelf pigment price. Colorant loading runs 40 to 65 wt% of the concentrate in ordinary practice, stretching to 15 to 80 wt% at the extremes, so two concentrates priced identically per kilogram can differ by more than a factor of four in delivered pigment.

The usual addition rate is 1 to 5% of the base polymer. Coloured PE pipe runs at a 2 to 4% let-down (49:1 to 24:1), often lower for non-pressure pipe, while the equivalent black pipe concentrate carries 35 wt% carbon black let down at 5 to 6.5% (19:1 to 14:1). Every colour house writes the ratio in one convention or the other inside the same technical note, so a quote has to state which one it means before two numbers can be compared. The full composition, arithmetic and both let-down conventions are worked through on the color masterbatch entry, the technical page this directory sends buyers back to once the supplier question is answered.

Color Masterbatch Manufacturers: The Directory#

The 8 producers below fall into 3 groups: global masterbatch and concentrate producers, additive and compound houses that also supply concentrates, and regional or specialist concentrate producers.

Table T2. Color masterbatch producer directory

An empty cell means the attribute is not yet confirmed against a named source. Unconfirmed values stay blank and are never filled with an estimate.

No company pays for inclusion or position in this directory, and the rows above are not ranked. Companies are listed only where at least one attribute is verified against a named source; empty cells are attributes we have not confirmed, and they are never filled with an estimate. See our editorial policy for the full verification method.

1. Global Masterbatch and Concentrate Producers (4)#

Global masterbatch and concentrate producers supply colour concentrate as their main plastics business; this group has four companies: Avient, Ampacet, Tosaf and Cabot. Avient was formed as PolyOne on 31 August 2000 from Geon and M.A. Hanna, bought Clariant Masterbatches in 2020 for about USD 1.6 billion and Magna Colours in 2021 for USD 48 million, and reported USD 3.26 billion in revenue for 2025 under its SEC XBRL filings. Ampacet describes itself as the global masterbatch leader. Tosaf runs 22 sites across more than 50 countries with about 1,600 employees, covering colour and additive masterbatch. Cabot's concentrate line, PLASBLAK, is black rather than colour, and is listed here because a colour programme almost always runs alongside a black concentrate.

2. Additive and Compound Houses That Also Supply Concentrates (2)#

Additive and compound houses that also supply concentrates reach the converter with a compound or an additive concentrate rather than a colour-only portfolio; this group has two companies: Teknor Apex and Clariant. Teknor Apex supplies vinyl compounds, TPE, engineering thermoplastics, colorants and masterbatch from Pawtucket, Rhode Island and 15 further locations. Clariant sold its masterbatch business to PolyOne in 2020 for about USD 1.6 billion and now reaches plastics through AddWorks additive concentrates and Licocene, Licowax and Ceridust waxes from Muttenz; its Licocene grades work as dispersion aids and carriers that allow higher pigment loadings at lower temperature and shear.

3. Regional and Specialist Concentrate Producers (2)#

Regional and specialist concentrate producers make up most of the global colour masterbatch market by company count, though this directory verifies only two: Plastika Kritis and Hubron. Both are named as masterbatch producers in the underlying our sources, which records no further attribute for either. Producers of this kind, serving a single country or a narrow processing niche, outnumber the global names in Table T2 many times over, and this directory's coverage of them stays incomplete until further data is verified.

Who Makes the Pigments Inside a Color Masterbatch?#

The colour in a concentrate almost never comes from the company that sells you the concentrate: titanium dioxide comes from four producers, carbon black from two, and organic pigments largely from Sun Chemical, Sudarshan and DIC. Colorants for plastics divide into six classes at the producer level, each sitting behind a different part of the shade card.

Chemours (Ti-Pure), Tronox, Kronos Worldwide and Venator supply the titanium dioxide behind every white, tint and opaque shade. Cabot (BLACK PEARLS, VULCAN, ELFTEX) and Orion Engineered Carbons supply the carbon black behind blacks, greys and the shading of dark colours. Sun Chemical, which now includes the former BASF pigments business, Sudarshan, which carries the Heubach, Hostaperm, Hostatint and Sudaperm names after completing the Heubach acquisition on 3 March 2025, and DIC supply the bright chromatic range of reds, yellows, blues and greens. Lanxess (Macrolex) and Sudarshan supply solvent dyes for transparent colours in polystyrene, SAN, ABS, PMMA, PC, PVC-U and PET, but not in polyolefins, where they migrate. Shepherd Color, Vibrantz and Lanxess (Bayferrox) supply the complex inorganic pigments behind heat-stable, weather-stable earth tones. BASF (Tinopal OB), Clariant (Hostalux) and Mayzo (Benetex OB, OB-1) supply the optical brighteners that whiten natural and white concentrates. Each class's chemistry, mechanism and dosage are worked through on colorants for plastics, and a restricted, discontinued or reformulated pigment upstream forces the colour house to rematch the shade, which is why identity belongs in the buyer's specification, not only in a shade number.

Table T3. Who makes the pigments inside

Producers named in our source library; the list is not exhaustive. Lead chromate and cadmium pigment producers are deliberately absent: see the restricted-substance check below.

How Do You Choose a Color Masterbatch Supplier? 8 Specification Checks#

Comparing two color masterbatch quotes takes 8 checks, and only the first one is about the company: the other seven are about the pellet, the pigment inside it and the paperwork that travels with it. The colorant class is chosen before the supplier, following the same logic used to work out how to select plastic additives for any other family, set out on how to select plastic additives. Buyers should compare concentrates on colorant identity, loading and delivered pigment content, not on the shade card or price per kilogram of pellet.

1. Identify the colorant, not the shade. A colorant carries a Colour Index Generic Name (for example Pigment Red 254) and a Constitution Number (C.I. 74160); the Colour Index, maintained by SDC Enterprises and AATCC, lists more than 27,000 products under about 13,000 generic names.
2. Read the loading. Colorant content runs 40 to 65 wt% of the concentrate, 15 to 80 wt% at the extremes, so two concentrates priced identically can differ fourfold in delivered colorant.
3. Fix the let-down ratio and its convention. Usual addition is 1 to 5% of the base polymer; coloured PE pipe runs 2 to 4% (49:1 to 24:1). Active colorant content equals loading multiplied by let-down, a calculation the let-down ratio calculator runs for both conventions.
4. Match the carrier to your base polymer. Wax is a universal carrier; EVA or LDPE carry colour into polyolefins and polyamide; polystyrene carries it into ABS, SAN and, at times, PC.
5. Match the pigment to your processing temperature. Diarylide pigments decompose above about 200°C; low-treatment rutile titanium dioxide suits extrusion above 525°F (274°C) but promotes pinking, while weathering grades struggle above 450°F (232°C).
6. Establish the food-contact route. EU colorants sit outside the Union list of Regulation (EU) No 10/2011; US colorants fall under 21 CFR 178.3297, detailed below.
7. Establish the restricted-substance position. Cadmium, lead chromate and the PPWR heavy-metal sum each set a limit a colour choice has to clear, detailed below.
8. Ask for dispersion and colour evidence. A filter pressure value, a microdispersion rating and CIELAB coordinates travel with a well-run lot, detailed below.

Download the Color Masterbatch Specification and RFQ Worksheet (PDF) to run all 8 checks against a real quote.

Table T4. The 8 checks, what to ask for and the value behind each

How to Check the Food-Contact and Restricted-Substance Route#

Colorants sit outside the Union list of Regulation (EU) No 10/2011, which is why no European colour house can hand you a Union list entry for its pigment, and why compliance moves to the finished article instead. A short set of colorant-type substances do carry their own FCM entries (carbon black 411; titanium dioxide 610 and its surface-treated forms 805, 873, 1077; zinc sulphide 403; iron oxide 409; mica 597; OB-1 422; BBOT 500). Every other colorant still has to keep the finished article inside the regulation's overall migration limit of 10 mg/dm², generic specific migration limit of 60 mg/kg, and, for a metal pigment, the Annex II limits in mg/kg food (aluminium 1, barium 1, cobalt 0.05, copper 5, iron 48, manganese 0.6, zinc 5, nickel 0.02, antimony 0.04; cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and arsenic not detectable), explained in full on EU 10/2011 food contact rules.

In the United States, 21 CFR 178.3297 defines a colorant as a dye, pigment or other substance that imparts or alters colour without migrating visible colour, and covers optical brighteners alongside colorants listed in parts 73, 74, 81 and 82. Named caps include Pigment Red 254, Pigment Brown 24 and Pigment Yellow 53 at 1%; Pigment Yellow 180 at 1.0%; Pigment Yellow 138 at 1% (fill ≤158°F/70°C); chromium oxide green, cobalt aluminate and copper chromite black at 5%; manganese violet at 2%; zinc sulfide at 10%; Solvent Blue 104 at 0.0004% of a 177.1630-compliant PET resin. Titanium dioxide, iron oxides, ultramarines and phthalocyanine pigments carry no numeric limit; Pigment Yellow 83, bismuth vanadate, Solvent Red 135, Solvent Yellow 114, Pigment Red 122 and Pigment Violet 23 are simply not listed, so their status is not established rather than barred, per FDA food contact rules.

Three restricted-substance instruments reach a coloured part directly. Under Article 5(4) of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, (EU) 2025/40, lead, cadmium, mercury and hexavalent chromium together may not exceed 100 mg/kg from 12 August 2026, tracked on the packaging and packaging waste regulation page. Cadmium is capped at 0.01% by weight of the plastic under REACH Annex XVII entry 23 (cadmium sulphide an SVHC since 16 December 2013); lead chromate, Pigment Yellow 34 and Pigment Red 104 reached the Candidate List on 13 January 2010 and Annex XIV sunset on 21 May 2015; lead in PVC is capped at 0.1% under entry 63, Regulation (EU) 2023/923, since 29 November 2024.

The answer to ask for: a written compliance route, EU food contact, a 21 CFR 178.3297 position, the PPWR sum, or none. "FDA approved" and "food grade" name no regulatory status. Entries 23 and 63, the restrictions a coloured part meets most often, sit on REACH Annex XVII restrictions.

How to Check Dispersion, Colour Tolerance and Batch Consistency#

Dispersion is the one quality a colour house genuinely controls, and it is measured rather than claimed: the supplier already generates a filter pressure value and a microdispersion rating for every lot. Dispersing agents, among them waxes, metal soaps and polyglycerol esters such as Palsgaard Einar 103 dosed at 1 to 5% of the formulation, wet the pigment, lower melt viscosity and prevent re-agglomeration, raising colour strength and lowering filter pressure value; poor dispersion shows up as gels in blown film.

Colour is measured in two CIE spaces, Yxy (1931) and CIELAB Lab* (1976), and a match in either space still has to survive a change of light source. Metamerism, a colour that matches under one illuminant and misses under another, has to be managed whenever a heavy-metal pigment is replaced; the CIELAB method and illuminant pair a buyer specifies are covered on colour measurement and matching.

What arrives with a well-run delivery is evidence, not a promise: black concentrates carry a microdispersion rating on a 1 to 5 scale (1 best), measured on about 1.5 mil PE film per lot, the same evidence expected with a colour delivery. Applicable standards are EN 12877 (heat stability), EN 13900 (dispersibility, filter pressure value) and EN 14469 (colorants in PVC), alongside ISO 6209 and ASTM D3849; no numeric Delta E pass or fail is stated here, since that tolerance belongs to the buyer's specification. The filter pressure value method is covered on dispersion testing of pigments and masterbatch.

How Do You Request a Color Masterbatch Quote? 10 Items#

A colour quote is only comparable when every supplier prices the same pellet, which takes 10 items in the request. None of the ten includes a minimum order quantity, lead time, packaging size, colour-matching turnaround or margin figure, since the knowledge behind this directory holds no verified value for any of them.

1. Target colour, as a physical standard or CIELAB values plus the illuminant pair.
2. Base polymer and grade, with its melt flow rate.
3. Process and melt temperature range, injection moulding, film or sheet extrusion, blow moulding or fibre, since it sets the pigment ceiling.
4. Colorant identity or exclusions, by Colour Index Generic Name.
5. Target let-down ratio and its convention, percentage or X:1.
6. Opacity or transparency requirement, and whether titanium dioxide is permitted.
7. Compliance route required, EU 10/2011 with the Annex II metal limits, a 21 CFR 178.3297 position, the PPWR heavy-metal limit, or a toy or electronics requirement.
8. Fastness requirement, outdoor service life, sterilisation or contact with fats.
9. Annual volume and packaging form.
10. Dispersion evidence required with delivery, and whether a colour-matched sample is wanted.

Send one colour specification to several verified suppliers with the plastic additive supplier finder.

Where Are Color Masterbatch Producers Located?#

Colour concentrate production is the least geographically concentrated part of the additive supply chain, because a concentrate follows the converter rather than the pigment plant: it is bulky, matched to a local colour standard and cheap to make close to where it is used. Verified headquarters exist for five of the eight producers: Avient in Avon Lake, Ohio; Cabot in Boston, Massachusetts; Teknor Apex in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, with 15 further locations; Clariant in Muttenz, Switzerland; and Tosaf in Israel, with 22 sites across more than 50 countries. Asia-Pacific holds more than 50% of plastic additive demand by volume (Ceresana, 2023) or 55% by value (Precedence Research, 2025), and concentrate production follows that converter base. This directory states no producer count by country: the paid directories publishing 67 to 100 companies here state no method behind their counts.

Color Masterbatch Manufacturers in India#

India is where the colour concentrate demand signal is loudest in this query set, and it is also where our verified coverage is thinnest: our source library holds no confirmed Indian colour masterbatch producer, although it does hold a verified Indian pigment producer that supplies them. Six of the eight related searches on the UK-spelling query "colour masterbatch manufacturers" name India, Gujarat, Ahmedabad or Delhi, and "masterbatch manufacturers in india" carries 170 monthly searches against 1,300 for the unqualified head term.

The companies ranking on this query, among them JJ Plastalloy, Perfect Colourants, Colman Polychem, Supreme Petrochem, Poddar Pigments and Vibrant Color Tech, have no record in our source library and are not named here until they do. What the directory can verify are the Indian additive companies behind Indian colour production: Platinum Industries (Mumbai; plants in Palghar and Ain Sokhna, Egypt), Fine Organics (Mumbai; oleochemistry since 1971) and Sudarshan (Pune), which completed the Heubach acquisition on 3 March 2025. The full, verified list sits on plastic additive manufacturers and suppliers in India.

Color Masterbatch Manufacturers in China and Southeast Asia#

China matters to a colour buyer first as a pigment source and only second as a concentrate source: it holds 6.0 of the 9.9 million tonnes of world titanium dioxide pigment capacity, according to the US Geological Survey's 2026 Mineral Commodity Summaries. The Chinese producers named for titanium dioxide in the underlying research are LB Group (Lomon Billions) and Pangang, and their output sets much of the cost floor under white and tinted concentrate worldwide.

The companies ranking as colour masterbatch suppliers out of China, Vietnam and Egypt, among them Charming Masterbatch, Nuoxin, Anmei, Europlas and Mascom, have no record in our source library and are not named here as suppliers; Charming Masterbatch publishes a self-ranking "Top 8" list that places itself first, and it appears in the sources for this page only as that list's author. What the directory can verify is processing-aid supply: Ampacet, Tosaf, Avient, Baerlocher and Clariant are named as offering PFAS-free processing-additive alternatives, a question that arrives with every specification that includes a processing aid; Chinese additive capacity generally is covered on plastic additive manufacturers and suppliers in China.

What Does Color Masterbatch Cost?#

No colour concentrate price is published anywhere, and the reason is structural rather than commercial: the pellet is made to your colour standard, at a loading the supplier chooses, for a let-down ratio you choose, so there is no unit two suppliers could quote against. The knowledge behind this directory holds no price for masterbatch or colour masterbatch, and no value from a paywalled price-reporting agency is reproduced here for any concentrate.

The one published figure that moves concentrate cost upstream is the titanium dioxide landed duty-paid import price into the United States: about USD 3,200 per tonne in 2025 against USD 3,170 in 2024, USD 3,240 in 2023, USD 3,450 in 2022 and USD 2,920 in 2021 (US Geological Survey, 2026 Mineral Commodity Summaries); world capacity was 9.9 million tonnes per year against about 1.0 million tonnes of United States production in 2025. Two arithmetic drivers turn that upstream price into delivered cost, colorant loading and let-down ratio, setting cost per coloured part far more than price per kilogram of concentrate does. The published series by substance are covered on plastic additive prices.

─── The sections below cover the wider masterbatch supply chain, not color masterbatch itself. ───

Which Other Masterbatch Suppliers Does a Colored Part Need?#

A coloured part rarely runs on colour alone: the same hopper usually takes a white or black concentrate for opacity, a filler concentrate for cost and an additive concentrate for properties the polymer lacks by itself. Several concentrates can be combined in one hopper; the black pipe concentrate is the clearest published example, running at 35 wt% carbon black let down at 5 to 6.5% (19:1 to 14:1), with anything above 40 wt% carbon black avoided in that application. Each of the other three concentrate types is directed by a sibling directory.

Table T5. Other masterbatch supplier directories

Black, White and Filler Masterbatch Suppliers#

Black is the one concentrate with a published loading convention: the North American standard for pressure pipe is a 35 wt% carbon black concentrate let down at 5 to 6.5% (19:1 to 14:1), giving about 1.75 to 2.3% carbon black in the finished pipe. Cabot's PLASBLAK is the one black concentrate brand this directory attributes to a named company, and Ampacet's REC-NIR-BLACK, a near-infrared-detectable black concentrate carrying COTREP certification for polypropylene and HDPE rigid packaging, is the one recyclability certification recorded in our source library for any concentrate. White and filler masterbatch follow different loading logic, opacity from titanium dioxide for white and cost and stiffness from mineral fillers for filler, each with its own supplier directory.

Additive Masterbatch and One-Stop Concentrate Suppliers#

Four producers in this directory supply colour and additive concentrates from the same programme, which matters less for the purchase order than for the arithmetic: Avient, Ampacet, Tosaf and Clariant, through its AddWorks range, all reach the converter with both concentrate types from one site. Tosaf's FogFree line adds antifog performance, and Ampacet's BIAX4CE range for biaxially oriented polyethylene film covers antiblock, antistatic, antifog and both migrating and non-migrating slip and white in one family. Combining a colour and an additive concentrate in the same hopper changes the total let-down, and the colour has to be rematched at the new dilution; size and producer data for the wider category sit on masterbatch market.

How Consolidation Reshaped the Masterbatch Supplier List#

Two transactions reshaped the colour supply chain in five years: Clariant left masterbatch in 2020 when PolyOne bought the business for about USD 1.6 billion and renamed itself Avient, and Clariant left pigments in 2022, selling to Heubach and SK Capital while keeping a 20% stake, with that pigment line reaching Sudarshan when it completed the Heubach acquisition on 3 March 2025. Avient itself kept acquiring, buying Magna Colours in 2021 for USD 48 million and DSM Protective Materials in 2022 for USD 1.485 billion, and BASF agreed the sale of its own pigments business to DIC in 2019 for EUR 1.15 billion, a deal that closed in 2021. No number-one producer or market share is stated anywhere on this page, because no neutral ranking of colour concentrate producers exists; where a ranking is published elsewhere on this site, its method is stated in full on largest plastic additive companies.

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