Ukrainian dairy producer invests in PET stretch blow molding line

Ukrainian dairy producer Organic Milk has invested in a new automatic stretch blow molding machine that will allow it to switch its bottles to PET.

Following the trend towards PET as a packaging material for dairy, which is rising in popularity and stealing market share from more traditional materials like glass and paper cartons, Organic Milk installed an APF-3002 machine from packaging equipment manufacturer PET Technologies.

The Austria-headquartered company also supplied Organic Milk with two sets of molds for various bottle volumes.

PET Technologies said that PET packages presented ‘an opportunity for a brand to stand out from similar products on shelves’ with different designs, different volumes and different bottle colours. The bottles’ hermetic characterises, odour barrier protection, lightweight material and sustainable attributes contribute to easier logistics, sales geography expansion and a decrease in overall production and delivery costs.

One of the challenges Organic Milk faced was to produce a high-quality white milk bottle due to its high heat penetration barrier. To solve the issue, the company developed an APF-3002 automatic blower milk modification with guaranteed 3,000-bottle-an-hour production capacity.

Its intense preform heating system with additional heating modules and innovative air-cooling system facilitates the production of high-quality bottles with an original design, PET Technologies said.

Organic Milk operates the first factory in Ukraine to produce organic milk in a fully closed production cycle. The plant is located in Baranivka in central Ukraine, roughly halfway between Kyiv and Lviv.