Feature: It?s showtime for blown bottlesFeature: It?s showtime for blown bottles
November 5, 2005
The new Krones Smart Line featuring Acculink continuous bottle handling is the start of a bottling line fully integrated from blowmolding to packing cartons. Bekum?s new 14-cavity BM 806 D can run at 2800 bph. Bottles blown with sterile air and sealed in the Bekum 806 D machine are unsealed just before filling, eliminating extra cleaning. The Magplastic SSB-08 (8-cav, 12,800 bph) is the new top end of its SBM line (shown is the SSB-04, as the SSB-08 is still being built).Bekum?s new CLC controls feature a faster hardware/software combo with an interface already familiar to current users.Krones Wall Wizard detects current wall thickness inline and material distribution is regulated automatically by changing the temperature profile during preform heating.Krones Temperature Wizard uses an infrared camera at the linear oven exit to measure the temperature profile of each preform.Minimizing spacing between blow stations of SIG Blomax systems helped boost output from 1630 to 1800 bph/cavity.SIG?s Speed-loc system uses a simple handle to speed up mold cavity changes and has a quickly adjustable stretch rod.SIPA?s new rotary blowmolder offers three- and single-cavity configurations and fast changeover times.The new SIPA SFL linear blowmolders offer 1800 bph/cavity and a lot of configuration flexibility. SIPA?s Smartcoat external coating system offers adjustable CO2 and O2 barrier levels and output up to 36,000 bph.Plast Engineering Knauff (Taunusstein, Germany) has designed and is selling a self-contained PET bottle blowing and filling system complete in a 20-ft container that can be transported easily to a disaster area. The Knauff SMI stretch blowmolding machine and an automatic Filltec filling system together will make and fill about 700 one-liter water bottles per hour from PET preforms. The bottles are automatically closed and labeled. A higher performance 3000-bph system is also available in a 40-ft container.The new Sidel SBO Compact linear blowing machine guarantees global machine efficiency of 95% at a production rate of 1600 bpm and is made for smaller production volumes. |
Blowmolded packaging was a leading player on a big, make that huge, stage at the Drinktec show in Munich. Within 12 large exhibition halls, some 2000 exhibitors hosted 160,000 visitors. A major portion of the space goes to production tech for beer, carbonated soft drinks (CSD), juices, and dairy products. However, the two halls plus parts of two more that make up the packaging part of Drinktec would still be a good-sized fair on their own. So, how?s business?
To Our Health
Talking with a variety of equipment suppliers at Drinktec makes it clear that the blowmolded drink packaging business is quite healthy. Drink types and brands are proliferating; new dairy and juice drinks are multiplying; and the package often is more of a brand differentiator than its contents?great news for blowmolders.
Blowmolded plastic continues to increase its penetration of the bottle business at the expense of glass, metal, and paper cartons. PET is the leading material, and the biggest volume of PET production is done by two-stage stretch blowmolding using injection molded preforms. But there is competition, most notably from polypropylene. PP?s lower price is a strong attraction in these days of steadily escalating material prices, and materials suppliers are solving many issues of clarity, heat resistance, and barrier properties. And many products don?t need clarity. But PET also is growing and looks to be king of the hill for a while.
A new material is emerging, coming in from the fields, so to speak. NatureWorks, which is marketing clear polylactide (PLA) resin, was at Drinktec, though not exhibiting. PLA is made by fermenting sugar from natural plant sources into lactic acid, which is the raw material for PLA.
Many associate it with corn, but the sugar can come from many sources. Work is being done to use biomass from waste streams, for instance. The raw material is abundant, renewable, and can be produced within North America. Brian Glasbrenner, who heads up business development for films and bottles at NatureWorks, says the market is interested, many markets in fact. If the price of other bottle materials stabilizes at a high level, which he feels is likely, the time could be right for PLA.
Early adopters in Japan have been using the material in electronics gear for a while. Packaging/bottling applications in Europe are being driven by recycling and environmental regulations combined with marketers wanting to differentiate themselves through environmental sensitivity.
On the production side, several preform system suppliers told PM&A that PLA fits into conventional processing systems with about the same tweaking as any material change: the right screw, hot runner adjustment, and so on, but nothing extraordinary. Glasbrenner says NatureWorks has interest from bottlers of fresh milk, fruit juice, vegetable oil, and water containers. And beer? Could well be.
What are You Drinking?
Market-wise, the growth in blowmolded bottles is pretty well spread across all sectors. The new juice and dairy drinks, yogurt smoothies, and similar novelties foster a rising tide of new package developments. The CSD sector is flat (pardon the pun), but on a very high plateau. And who knew 10 years ago that there could be so many varieties of water? Oxygenated water? Well, why not. Plastics, adaptable as they are, are gaining share across all sectors.
Though growth is spread broadly, an approaching 800-lb gorilla has most everyone?s attention. And how appropriate that during the week before Oktoberfest in Munich the biggest buzz at the show was about beer?putting it in plastic bottles, that is.
Yes, we know you?ve been hearing about beer in plastic for what seems like eternity. You?ve likely seen a few specimens, probably in a stadium. But you are most likely reading this in North America, a part of the world near the end of the plastic beer bottle parade. Mind you, plastic beer bottles have not taken over the world, at least not yet, but the trend is moving faster outside North America, notably in Asia and Europe.
Market Segments Within Segments
Our first stop was blowmolding equipment supplier Bekum, where Christian Richard smilingly noted that Bekum was the only supplier of extrusion blowmolding equipment present. He was clearly happy to be in the midst of PETpoint, the show-within-a-show almost exclusively given over to PET. Why?
Extrusion-blown PP and PE, he says, flat outperform stretch-blown PET in a number of noncarbonated drink markets on both performance and price. The market for those drinks is growing and more bottlers are thinking beyond PET.
A significant factor is PP?s resistance to distortion up to 96ºC, which permits the hot filling many packagers need. In addition, Bekum says an extrusion-blown multilayer PP bottle has an oxygen barrier effect ten times better than a stretch-blown multilayer PET bottle. Thus products in PP can have shelf lives up to 12 months, compared with three months in multilayer PET.
Bekum says that the recent sale of its newly developed BM 806 D system to a Spanish company is a strong step forward for the company in the dairy market. The 806D is a 14-cavity (7+7) system for containers up to 12 liters that produces up to 2800 containers/hr. The newly sold system uses Bekum?s aseptic technology, blowing the bottles with sterile air and sealing them airtight in the machine. Just before filling, the sealing dome atop the opening is cut off. No need for any extra cleaning process.
Inspection technology specialist AGR International used Drinktec as the launch pad for three new products. Its new Fill Height Tester measures volume using fill height or brimful (overflow) modes, or a combination of the two. It will work on a variety of rigid bottles/containers up to 4-liter capacity.
The new handheld MBT 7200 and 7400 Wall Thickness Gauges feature sensor-integrated digital signal processing, in which all measuring signals are created and completely processed inside the sensor with no influence of noise-related errors. AGR says its new PETWallplus with Shelf-Life Management System gives blowmolders an online tool for optimizing the key controllable parameters that affect the shelf life of PET containers. Material distribution data that are captured by the PETWallplus system are analyzed by M-Rule software and used to map material use relative to shelf life of the bottle being produced. The monitoring and analysis are constant and done in real time. Results are displayed and continuously updated to give operators a visual picture of material use and predicted shelf life.
The Krones AG stand at Drinktec occupied all but the front wall of one of the twelve large halls of the Munich Fairgrounds. Enormous only begins to describe it, but the company needs a lot of space to show its complete high-volume bottling lines.
For blowmolding itself, Krones was showing three technologies to cut PET bottle making costs?three Wizards no less. The Air Wizard cuts blowing air consumption by minimizing dead air space, lowering final blowmolding pressure, and actively recycling blowing air.
Temperature Wizard reduces bottle wall thickness fluctuation. An infrared camera at the linear oven exit measures the temperature profile of each preform.
Wall Wizard monitors what the Temperature Wizard regulates via control feedback to the preform heating operations. Wall Wizard detects current thickness online at up to four points on the container wall, which enables automatic regulation of thickness distribution by changing the temperature profile during preform heating.
Wall Wizard and Temperature Wizard work in all models of the Contiform S Series up to 50,000 bph, and can be retrofitted to Contiform S and H blowmolding machines with Zenon visualization.
American Beer in Plastic? Later.
As Krones? VP of sales for North and Central America, Andreas Müller sees a great difference in how the U.S. and European markets are moving toward plastic beer bottles. The United States has relatively fewer major brewers and they are larger. Their commensurately larger plant investment is more of a deterrent to change.
Where Europe is already seeing significant PET penetration of the beer bottle market, Müller says he foresees no substantial change in the U.S. for another five years or so, even though most major brewers are already experimenting with plastic.
The tipping point will come when the mass bottlers can get a good bottle with high quality labeling and the cost difference is great enough to justify the capital investment. Accelerating that may be the fact that the North American beer market is not growing.
Brewers, says Müller, are likely to seek growth in market niches with new brands, which would most likely have distinctive new packaging?a PET strong point. Underlying all this is whether PET has an influence on taste and freshness. American brewers want product quality to be uniform, consistent, and high at each of their plants.
Swiss-based Magplastic is expanding its SSB two-stage PET blowmolding machine series at the top end with the SSB-08, an 8-cavity model that can produce up to 12,800 bph of .2- to 2.5-liter containers, including oval and complex shapes and heat-set bottles. It reaches the market at the end of 2005 so it was not at the Drinktec Fair, but Magplastic still had plenty of market-specific technology to show.
Jean-Marc Moriggia, Magplastic?s sales director, said the company?s new loading system for bottles without neck rings not only gives design freedom to packaging companies, but also means that a standard Magplastic SSB-02 machine can blow bottles as small as 40 ml with only minor customizing. Pharmaceutical makers are a key market for this, along with personal care, food, and beverages. The company says a patent is pending on its ?Rotoconic? technology as of show time. Moriggia said the new neck orientation feature for SSB-02 machines answers another market demand, which is that neck threads are always in the same position relative to the package design. Magplastic?s technology, he says, is not only precise but can be used with standard preforms rather than cost-adding positioning notches.
New wide-mouth technology for the SSB-02 means that, for what is termed a minor investment, production of containers with opening diameters up to 88 mm can be made at the rate of 2200 bph. Magplastic?s new preferential heating technology balances the hot and cold axes for more difficult bottle shapes, a category that is growing rapidly as designers continue searching for product differentiation.
The Blomax 10 Series III stretch blowmolder on the SIG Corpoplast Drinktec stand produces at 1800 bph/station, consumes less air thanks to its Airback recycling system, does fast changeovers using the Speed-Loc quick-change system, and includes two fully integrated vision QA systems that detect and eject nonround preforms and a wall-thickness measurement device.
You would think SIG?s manager of new technology, Frank Haesendonckx, would want to talk your ear off about it, or about the Plasmax plasma bottle-coating system that creates a transparent recyclable barrier on PET bottles for juice, beer, CSD, or edible oil. He does, but only briefly before talking about Bottles & Shapes, the umbrella term SIG uses to describe the solutions approach it has for putting its 30 years of competence in the hands and heads of bottle makers, custom or captive.
?The package,? says Haesendonckx, ?is the key to everything.? With that as its starting point, SIG recently put a lot of effort into organizing its knowledge as tools for bottle makers. For example, a 3D printer in SIG?s labs can create a hollow or solid model of a bottle in a few hours from gypsum plaster, and it can be in the bottle maker?s hands the same day for evaluation and modification. Pointing to a nearby wall of bottles, he says that all the design data are in a database for easy access.
It contains not just the design factors, he says, but all the economic factors as well. When a molder wants to create a bottle, SIG?s knowledge base will supply information on reducing product costs by reducing energy consumption, boosting productivity, using less material, designing the bottle for easy filling and other characteristics.
Roughly speaking, a PET bottle?s cost is generally about 15% preform, 15% blowing, and 70% material, so naturally a lot of attention is given to reducing the material. Thinning out the walls is the most obvious way to do that, but there is also the neck. The real trick comes in balancing all that with processing, filling, transportation, and consumer needs.Tuning its machines to the market, SIG looked at the trend toward single-serve packages. The resulting redesign brings the blowing stations closer together on its systems. This helped bring productivity from 1630 bttl/cavity to 1800 bttl/cavity in the space of a year. From January 2006 onward, 1800 will be the norm for the entire Blomax line.
SIPA says the new models of its SFL linear blowmolding machines were designed to incorporate high flexibility and low power consumption into an easily customized system. The range has two base platforms, the SFL 4 and the SFL 6. The SFL 4 has a maximum production capacity of 1800 bph/cavity and produces containers up to 3 liters using two-, three- or four-cavity layouts.
The SFL 6 platform, with production up to 1600 bph/cavity, makes containers up to 3 liters with a 6-cavity layout, up to 5 liters in a 4-cavity layout, and up to 10 liters with 2- or 3-cavity layouts.
Short changeover times support the flexibility. Cavity-count changes based on the same blowmold pitch take an hour. Half an hour is enough to change molds with the same neck size and it takes 4 hours for pitch changes or changing cavity numbers. A quick- neck-change system requires no tools.
Flexibility also figures large in SIPA?s new SFR 9/27 rotary blowmolder, also on display at Drinktec. Nine blowing stations can take 3-cavity molds for single-serve containers or single-cavity molds for larger bottles.
Productivity is 40,500 bph for 0.6 l iter and 16,000 bph for 3-liter bottles. Triple-single changeover takes about three hours, and single-single or triple-triple take about 40 minutes.
Sidel?s big news at Drinktec was its acquisition of Simonazzi from SIG. Since the transaction closed just 10 days before the fair, the Simonazzi display was physically still in the SIG area.
The new combination is a e1.1 million business and becomes the second largest player in the business behind Krones. Sidel-Simonazzi is part of packaging giant Tetra Laval.
Sidel had plenty of new technology on show, too. Debuting the first model in the new generation of its Combi series (blow, fill, cap), Sidel reported that the system can increase productivity by 23% and cut packaging costs by 20%. Like the SBO Compact (see photo at upper right), the Combi includes a good bit of technology from Sidel?s SBO Universal Series that was introduced in March 2005 following a three-year e25-million R&D program.
Format changeovers on the new Combi are 20% faster, and recipes can be programmed to set blowing-process and fill-volume parameters. Energy costs have been lowered thanks to 15% less electricity consumption and less dead air space. In addition, a number of features combine to notably improve hygiene when packaging still water.
Drinktec visitors had a sneak preview of Sidel?s new SBO Compact linear blowmolding machines.
This entry-level sister of the Universal range, which is aimed at lower-volume production that needs high price/performance value, will roll out during 2006.
Performance of the Compact approaches the levels of the Universal range: global machine efficiency is guaranteed at 95% and a production rate of 1600 bpm. Sidel says the scrap rate is less than .2%. The system can be containerized for shipment and positioned with a forklift.
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