The new benchmark for Light Weighting PET
Bottles is set to 12 grams by innovative SIG Corpoplast technology.
Light Weighting is a job for a professional. If you want
to minimise the weight of industrially produced bottles while retaining their
full fitness for daily use, it takes PET know-how along the entire chain of
competence - from the contents, the bottle design and the mould construction
through to the parameters of the production process.
For SIG Corpoplast, the term "Bottles &
Shapes" embodies this comprehensive know-how accumulated over 30 years of
experience in packaging technology. Now the company has defined a new benchmark
for light weight bottles: 12 grams for an 0.5 litre bottle to be used for
non-carbonated water.
That this is no cheap showmanship but reproducible
reality, will be demonstrated by the Hamburg based company at the drinktec 2005,
hall A4, stand 548.
The super light weight PET bottle will be produced on a
BLOMAX 10 Series III in the SIG Corpoplast exhibition area, and the
specifications will be confirmed in the Bottles & Shapes test stand.
Industrial production of such a light weight bottle is
only feasible thanks to the highly accurate, repeatable machine operation
including the mechanical cam controlled stretching process, that the BLOMAX
Series III stretch blow moulding machines are known for.
"The ambitious objectives for this bottle, that
already existed in a 13 gram version, were a weight reduction to 12 grams and a
top load of the filled bottle of more than 10kg", reports Frank
Haesendonckx, BLOMAX Product Manager at SIG Corpoplast.
"We succeeded by optimising the preform design and
slightly modifying the bottle design in the bottom and rib geometry. The result
is fantastic: thanks to this optimised process, we can virtually let the
material do all the work".
And such a weight reduction pays off: with an annual
production of 120,000,000 bottles, reducing the material input by a single gram
lowers the costs by €144,000 - just as a consequence of the material savings.
About SIG:
SIG is a global supplier of packaging material, plant
systems and services for the beverage industry and a leader in selected markets.
The SIG Beverages Division is an internationally leading
manufacturer of plant systems for the production of plastic packaging as well as
complete solutions for the beverage industry.
SIG Corpoplast is an internationally leading supplier with
30 years of experience in the design, construction, sales and servicing of
machines and systems for producing PET bottles. The machine range comprises
stretch blow molding machines of the BLOMAX Series III with outputs of more than
40,000 PET bottles per hour and PLASMAX coating machines for enhanced barrier
properties, improved quality and longer shelf life of sensitive drinks in PET
bottles.
With its 6,671 employees, the SIG group generated sales of
about 1.7 billion euro in the fiscal year 2004.
