BY ALEX CLERE AT DRINKTEC, GERMANY
Our focus for today is new moves in injection moulding and filling.
KHS launched a revolutionary injection blow moulding process that, instead of injecting sterilised air to expand the PET preform, they can directly inject the liquid contents instead.
The KHS FormFill system integrates what were previously two separate processes, promising ‘great savings’ in terms of system size, use of resources and further process execution.
KHS chairman Matthias Niemeyer called it ‘a revolution in the processing of plastic containers’.
Krones also said they were developing technology to aseptically fill PET performs with liquid, rather than air.
The highlight of their presence at Drinktec, which covers all of Hall B6, is the new Dynafill system that can fill crown-capped bottles in almost an instant – 500ml in 0.5 seconds, filled and capped. Though only currently compatible with crown-capped glass bottles, Krones hopes to extend the technology to other packaging formats and product categories in the future.
The Dynafill system can process up to 100,000 containers per hour.
Many of the largest exhibitors here are competing to have the fastest filling line, the lightest bottle, the smallest space requirements.
As well as the new FormFill process, KHS is exhibiting an ultra-lightweight 500ml bottle that comes in at just 5g.
On a tour of Krones’ exhibition, we were told how manufacturers cannot continue to grow sales and add new product lines with the burden of long changeover times.
Yesterday we spoke to Elisa Zanaletto from PET Engineering. For manufacturers of premium packaging, aggressive lightweighting isn’t so much of a priority but the ‘race to the bottom’ – in terms of package weight, filling times, changeover length – is evident across the trade floor here in Munich.
We’ll obviously have more for you from Messe München tomorrow.
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