PETpla.net Insider 01+02 / 2012

BOTTLING / FILLING 28 PET planet insider Vol. 13 No. 01+02/12 www.petpla.net Silver Springs Bottled Water Company implements the InnoPET BloFill monoblock concept* Silver Springs strikes gold *Based on an article by Georg Zuzok 1 and Mike Brancato 2 1 Head of Market Zone Americas, KHS GmbH, Bad Kreuznach 2 Vice President of Sales & Marketing, KHS USA, Inc. Silver Springs purchased the first monoblocked KHS stretch blow moulder/filler system InnoPET BloFill in 2008. Now this well-known beverage company has installed the KHS InnoPET BloFill monoblock with the new-generation stretch blow moulder InnoPET Blomax Series IV; the first ever to be used worldwide – in a high-performance version with an output of up to 72,000 0.5-l PET bph. The new monoblock is said to have led to significant energy- savings in production and to an increase in the “lightweighting” of their PET bottle. Silver Springs is a source which has quite a history behind it. Native Americans in the 16th century held the superb water quality at Silver Springs, located in what is today the region of Ocala, Florida, in high esteem. When Hullam Jones devel- oped the world’s first glass-bottomed boat in the 19th century and used it at Silver Springs to observe fish, turtles and century-old fossils, the source became more and more popular with the people of Florida. Today Silver Springs is known across the world. The breath-taking scenery provided by Silver Springs is used as a location in numerous films. The history of the Silver Springs Bottled Water Company dates back to 1886. The current owners Karl and Margaret Richmond bought the com- pany in 1991. At that time, business with bottled water was not strong in the USA. However, this did not pre- vent the Richmonds from recognising its enormous future potential. At the start, a team of just six people were engaged to fill Silver Springs water into 5l gallons (an American gallon is the equivalent of 3.785l ); today, the company employs 150 workers and, in addition to large containers, fills numerous PET bottle variants, from 0.24l right up to 1.5l PET bottles. Kane Richmond, President & CEO of the Silver Springs Bottled Water Company, says “Since 2008, we have been able to achieve a weight reduction from 13.2g to 9.1g with our 0.5l PET bottle, using a two- step process. 70% of our sales are in the 0.5l PET bottle. We are working on further reductions in weight. Our next targeted objective is to achieve a bottle weight of below 9g, and we even have our eyes fixed on the 8g mark. We are also currently cooper- ating with KHS to check through our entire PET bottle series”. Material savings Silver Springs is hoping to reduce the weight of its 0.5-l PET bottles again. A key aspect in material sav- ings using the monoblock concept in the production of plastic bottles is that lighter weight PET bottles can be used, since the transfer is much more gentle than if they are shifted via air conveyors. On the new InnoPET BloFill monoblock, this advantage is supplemented by the simplified blocking of filler and blow moulders in comparison to previous models. Here the functions for removing bottles from the blow station and adjusting the distance between finished PET bottles according to the configuration of the filling system is now handled by just one modular transfer wheel. If - as with the Silver Springs Bottled Water Company, which currently only fills still water - only non-carbonated bever- ages are to be bottled, the PET bottles are sent straight to the infeed star of the filling system after passing through the airlock. The servo motor-controlled stretch- ing process on the new stretch blow moulder generation allows the use of light weighting preforms. Thanks to the servo-controlled stretching process on the InnoPET Blomax Series IV, when monoblocked with a filling machine the stretching movement can now always be carried out at the optimum speed – irrespective of filler speed – allowing reductions in material. Karl Richmond (left), purchased the Silver Springs Bottled Water Company in 1991, and it is today managed by his son, Kane Richmond (right), President & CEO of Silver Springs. Light weighting SPECIAL