Champion Brands expands its blowmolding offerings

Champion Brands, a blender and packager of lubricating oils and automotive chemicals, is now offering blowmolding capabilities for private label customers.

While the company has blended and packaged its own brand and for some private label products for a number of years, Champion Brands General Manager Rick Pereles told PlasticsToday, it became a natural step to expand its offerings.

"We decided it made sense for us to vertically integrate by adding blowmolding capability in order that we could produce proprietary designed bottles for our own higher volume products," he said.

The company developed the process for about two years and concentrated on its own bottles to work out bugs before it solicited any business.

Champion currently sells bottles to two large companies and blows, blends and fills for three other major companies and several smaller ones and anticipates adding more business, Pereles said.

The company's blowmolding operation has the capability to produce HDPE and PVC bottles in sizes ranging from 4 oz to 2.5 gallons in a variety of colors. Champion's in-house Bekum 406D is a double station, shuttle blowmolding machine capable of blowing a daily capacity of approximately 35,000 PVC bottles or 50,000 HDPE bottles.

Champion, capable of taking resin in bulk railcar or truck, maintains three resin silos with approximate capacity of 750,000 lb. In addition, the company's bottle production routinely uses a percentage of regrind material, reusing and recycling otherwise unusable plastic. The company also frequently uses post consumer resin to meet state recycling laws.

The company's mainstay is still blending and packaging Champion branded products, focusing on the industrial, agricultural and automotive markets, but private labeled products do make up an important part of the company's overall volume, Pereles said. On that side, Champion specifically caters to marketers in the automotive aftermarket and those who seek to differentiate themselves through proprietary product formulation and product design.

"I see us adding a couple more blowmolding machines, but our core business is lubricants and automotive chemicals, so I just don't see rows of bottle manufacturing machines lined up spitting out bottles," he said. "The blowmolding business allows us to offer a one-stop-shop for prospective customers."