PETpla.net Insider 04 / 2012

EDITOUR REPORTS 31 PET planet insider Vol. 13 No. 04/12 www.petpla.net Focus on closures Hasplastik produces predominantly water and CSD closures. The company focuses on its own designs that are very well adapted to customer requirements. In the meantime there are just under 40 cap lines operating in Istanbul, chiefly on Netstal and Husky lines. Bottlers using Hasplastik caps are to be found in 45 countries worldwide. The company is older than 32 years now and more than 16 years ago the family-owned company Hasplastik made the decision to give up its activities in the bottle blowing sector and to concentrate instead on beverage closures. Murat Aner, Technical Director explains the move: “We were keen to export; closures are easier to transport than empty bottles“. Today there are 39 closure lines in Istan- bul processing 15,000t of Polyolefin. (With the additional four new lines it will be around 18.000 t within 2012.) It is mainly single-piece closures but a small number are fitted with a liner. All the closures come from injection moulding machines. Here the short neck closures for water (29/25) and CSD closures (PCO 28) dominate the picture on the shop floor. In addition a few other technical closures and caps are still being manufactured for the 19l containers. This trend in closures is being driven by Hasplastik itself in cooperation with toolmakers. “We came from 30/25 for water with a weight of 2.4g; then we went down to 1.75g gradually. Following the change to 29/25 we are now down to around 1.3g“ says Aner. The standard European designs do not extend to everywhere on the markets in which Hasplastik is active; therefore they are working on improve- ments to their own closures. View of one of the injection moulding halls with the big Net- stal lines In addition to the lightweighting trend, the bottling speed is increasingly coming into play. The faster a bot- tling plant runs, the greater the degree of precision needed for the closures. So all the closures go through camera inspection systems. Hasplastik has even applied the cavity number internally so that it is almost invisible. In the event of repeated errors in a particular cavity, this can undergo specific machining in the tool. The reason why the engrav- ing needs to be so small is because Hasplastik also offers inside laser marking for promotional campaigns. If there were differences in height due to engravings the laser pro- cess would not function satisfactorily. When it comes to printing on the closures Hasplas- tik has its own reasons for treading an additional path. Whereas the conventional route as regards CSD closures involves printing with inks containing solvents, they print the water closures with UV-drying inks. This eliminates any possibility of an adverse effect on the taste of the water due to solvents. One particularly striking example of in-house closure development is the 19l container sector. Here, one cus- tomer asked the company if they could please fit a pull ring because the pull tab that had been standard up to then was not user-friendly. No sooner said than done. But it was not long before a second generation developed where the pull ring (which not only protruded vertically so that you didn’t know whether opening involved pulling to the right or the left) subsequently became slightly tapered, thus ensuring that users were clear about which direction to pull in so as to open up the container. 19l container cap with tear off ring But Hasplastik is not only investing in new develop- ments; as far as the company is concerned, it is also important for them to offer value for money. And this is the reason why they are also investing in higher numbers of cavities wherever they find that they are no longer able to achieve the market price using the tool they have always used because of low numbers of cavities. As a result of having regularly invested in new tools Hasplastik has some tools where, although the closures are technologically-speaking OK, the small number of cavi- ties nevertheless puts pressure on commercial viability. They are now considering, along with these tools, a few machines and local partners, relocating their initial own- production outside Turkey in order to circumvent the rel- evant import duties. www.hasplastik.com Read Editour reports: Turkey PETplanet insider issue 5/2012:  Köksan  Sunpet  Coca-Cola Icecek