Cost and environmental efficiencies highlighted

Wrapetfill’s blow moulding machinery partner, 1 BLOW presented its Green BLOW ranges that feature fewer mechanical and wearing parts, electrical synchronisation via servo motors, as well as short and optimised movements, which all help lower energy consumption and bottle production costs. ‘We wanted to highlight more environment-friendly and cost-effective alternatives available for producing PET bottles to visitors,’ explained sales director, Olivier Perche. ‘Additionally, when pairing blow-moulding machines with the optional eco lamp, users can achieve power savings of between 28% and 34%. Another way to save power is the integrated air recovery unit, which uses remaining pressure after blowing thus avoiding use for low air pressure. In addition to that, blowing pressure can be optimised according to the bottle/mould design down to the minimum, for example, decreasing the blowing pressure from 40 to 30 bar reduces the power consumption of the air compressor by 20%.

Olivier also emphasised the ease of maintenance that the Green BLOW ranges offer. ‘Customers are supported online with a range of tutorials presenting various maintenance tasks. They can follow between 10 and 20 steps, which they can review individually as many times as they need to ensure that they did it correctly before moving on to the next step. Furthermore, they can access the machine’s spare parts list references via the touchscreen or on the website www.1blow-services.com to order these online when necessary to carry out preventative maintenance.’ This dedicated website has been internally developed to optimise viewing and the customer’s visit. Consequently. it is fully tailor-made and it benefits from frequent updates.

The partners also encourage customers to order a more basic model rather than an all-inclusive blow-moulding machine, which costs significantly more, at the beginning. ‘If the converter knows that they have the possibility of neck orientation and producing a flip-top cap after a year or two, for example, they can order the upgrade as a retrofit for a technician to install,’ he stated. ‘In the case of flip-top caps, the thread stance is reorientated mechanically on all standard preforms. This provides converters with a high-value bottle using a standard preform (whatever its colour and weight), which is more profitable.’

Henk de Klerk, Wrapetfill’s director, added that retrofittable options are available for oval bottles with preferential heating, where just two sides of the preforms are heated to obtain an even material distribution. He also noted that the SURE GRIP® feature is relatively new and consists of a bottle designed with the handle moulded directly into it, which means that no additional plastic part is required. This results in a sustainable bottle made from a single material and standard preform.

According to Henk, this feature has been tested and controlled in 1 BLOW’s laboratory and meets all quality parameters for top-load resistance, optimal material distribution, dimensions, thickness, fill level and weight in each bottle section. ‘Thanks to this innovation, the PET bottle is 100% recyclable,’ he emphasised. ‘Additionally, a child’s or an adult’s hand can easily grab the handle, and its centre of gravity provides outstanding balance during use.’ 

The SURE GRIP feature is available as an upgrade on existing 1 BLOW machines as well as on new 1XL, 1XXL, 2XL and 4XLs machines.