Blowmolding

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.

Borealis has launched a more transparent extrusion blowmolding grade of polypropylene (PP) specifically designed for cosmetics and baby bottles, with an eye on capturing market share forsaken by polycarbonate (PC), which continues to deal with concerns around bisphenol A (BPA).

The company said its Borclear RC737MO offers a "leap forward" in aesthetics by influencing the gloss, haze and clarity of bottles.

Flambeau Inc. has acquired Partners in Plastics LLC (PIP; Sharon Center), a Northeast Ohio based blowmolder serving the healthcare, lawn and garden, agriculture, consumer products, industrial, and fuel tank markets.

Bag bans, bottle backlash, wrap rage...in terms of public perception, 2011 was a year many players in the plastics packaging realm would rather forget. But as the new year begins the old year's battles are far from finished, with plastics fighting to hold on to packaging ground it long ago won from glass, aluminum, and paper.

Down slightly from a record 2010, plastics and packaging M&A is experiencing another "solid year" in spite of total deal activity slipping anywhere from 5% to 10%. The 74 deals finalized in the third quarter were down 20 transactions from Q3 2010 but still reflected strong buying and selling activity albeit at a more normalized level versus the pace set in 2010, according to the report's author, P&M Corporate Finance LLC.

Processors delving into both injection blow and injection stretch blow molding (ISBM) might want to consider the ASB-12N/10 one-step ISBM machine from Nissei ASB Machine Co. (Nagano, Japan) now offered with an option enabling conversion to the injection blow process and vice-versa within two hours.

Three-year-old MedPlast (Tempe, AZ) is looking for acquisition candidates in healthcare contract manufacturing in Latin America and Asia, and hopes to expand its global footprint within two years.

Former Milacron President Harold Faig.

A single-layer extrusion blow molding machine has proven to be capable of molding HDPE barrier fuel tanks for small engines such as outboard motors through a joint effort by processor JSP Corp. (Tokyo) and materials supplier Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co. (MGC; Tokyo).

A new report from market resource supplier Research and Markets (Dublin, Ireland) offers insight into the company's plastic packaging market analyses from the top 10 plastics packaging consumption countries: United States, China, Japan, India, Germany, United Kingdom, Brazil, France, Italy and Mexico.

Rigid plastics, glass and metal packaging processor Berlin Packaging has teamed with Ecologic Brands Inc. to begin commercial marketing of the latter company's "eco.bottles", so called because they are made from a recyclable and compostable fiber shell, with a plastic pouch and closure. The result is a bottle that requires up to 70% less plastic than a standard high-density polyethylene blowmolded package.