PETpla.net Insider 05 / 2012

CAPPING / CLOSURES 20 PET planet insider Vol. 13 No. 05/12 www.petpla.net Interview with Romeo Corvaglia, owner of the Corvaglia Group, headquartered in Switzerland Closure moulds – a complicated issue For most machinery manufacturers, it couldn’t be simpler. First, take a fast machine, add a mould and problem solved, you have a ready-to-go cap production unit. We talked with Romeo Corvaglia about the market for closure produc- tion systems and why, despite sounding so simple, it is not really that simple at all. In his opinion the closure is not just a matter of machine and mould. The entire approach has to be more holistic. PETplanet: Husky has bought up KTW, Engel has the JV Green Cap with Plastisud in China, and during the Euro crisis the Swiss Franc has been so high that the Swiss National Bank has had to intervene. Do you still see any potential when it comes to selling your Corvaglia closures moulds ? Corvaglia: Strictly speaking, we are not in the business of merely selling moulds but offering overall concepts for “closure solutions” to our customers. As a rule moulds are included in the contract. But, clearly, we earn our living by taking a holistic view of the closure. PETplanet: What exactly do you mean by “closure solutions“? Doesn’t every machine manufacturer claim to offer their customers “solutions”! Corvaglia: A closure is something that is highly dynamic. There is a lot of intellectual property in each closure design to guarantee high performance at lowest cost. First of all it needs to be manufactured and then it has to be applied onto a bottle. And this is the big difference from the preform. Neck finishes are standardised. The body of the preform is defined by the shape of the final bottle and the expertise of the bottle blower. An order for a preform is considered completed once the cor- rect tolerances have been achieved, and that’s where the story ends. A clo- sure, by contrast, not only has to be designed and produced, but also has to go through the capper without any problems and then withstand possi- bly tough conditions for many months before it even reaches the consumer. PETplanet: It doesn‘t always happen like that though, does it? It’s no coincidence that bottlers some- times buy equipment with two cappers on one unit so as to ensure that the faults attributable to closures do not adversely affect the performance of the production lines. Corvaglia: As is now becoming apparent, a closure is disproportion- ately more complex and, above all, more multifaceted than a preform. Unsurprising then that there are only a handful of closure manufacturers operating on a supra-regional level. In the preform sector, in contrast, Romeo Corvaglia, owner of the Corvaglia Group 28mm CSN sports cap 38mm Mercury cap 28mm Flexgrip Corvaglia 38mm Sensocap