PETpla.net Insider 11 / 2011

BOTTLE MAKING 33 PET planet insider Vol. 12 No. 11/11 www.petpla.net narrowed process variation window and lower standard deviation assured the company that it could continue its aggressive light-weighting program while maintaining identical package performance. Moving forward Commenting on the Process Pilot a few months after its deployment, Deputy General Manager Kobayashi listed “reduced process optimisation time at startup, improved bottle perfor- mances, reduced influence of opera- tors on blowmoulder settings, and a decrease in rejected packages” as its primary benefits. Before the system was installed, bottle and preform rejects averaged about 1%/a. Reject totals were reduced by 80%. The bev- erage producer has also successfully reduced the bottle weight. The 44g 2l tea bottle shed an additional 7g. Its current weight is now down to just 37g, a 16% reduction. Assuming resin pricing for bottle-grade PET of $1.00 per lb, the subsequent reduction works out at roughly $0.015 per bottle. With Haruna’s production of millions of bottles per month, the savings are considerable. Equally important, the company has made the move to lighter-weight preforms with no loss in bottle performance. Now that the first Process Pilot has been fully approved, Suntory intends to extend deploy- ment to additional blowmoulding lines, bringing it increasingly closer to the light-weighting goals of its sustainabil- ity campaign. Further light-weighting will produce significant savings in raw material costs as well, even more so with rising PET prices. www.agrintl.com To quantify the benefits of the AGR Process Pilot, Suntory gathered data over two 10-hour production periods, with and without the process control system enabled. The test showed that swings in the brimful volume were significantly reduced and the over- all average standard deviation was more consistent with the Process Pilot turned on. (Courtesy of AGR International) Figure 1: Brimful Figure 2: Topload When the same testing scenario was repeated to measure topload, similar results were obtained. With the Process Pilot enabled, Suntory found more consistent topload resist- ance and lower overall standard deviation. (Courtesy of AGR International)