PETpla.net Insider 05 / 2012

CAPPING / CLOSURES 27 PET planet insider Vol. 13 No. 05/12 www.petpla.net of them today measure up very well to the compression system manufac- turers. In the compression world, in fact we talk only about Sacmi today since the only competitor in Switzer- land has withdrawn the product line from the market and the other one does not sell to third parties. In the past it was compression moulding that pitched the cycle times and the injec- tion industry had long been chipping away at them. Looking at things from this angle, ‘THE’ closure production system probably does not exist today. There are certainly four to five injec- tion machine builders who stand out conspicuously from the rest. Among these 5 top suppliers, good on-site service is an absolutely essential factor but this varies from region to region. Nevertheless, an integrated concept and a sense of responsibility are lacking as far as the majority of suppliers are concerned and therefore many such projects tend to fail. PETplanet: Who are the manu- facturers, and what are the machines that Corvaglia use? Corvaglia: In the past we our- selves only used Husky and Netstal machines and we were looking at Engel for the next investment. Since Husky swallowed up our competitor KTW, and Engel signed a joint venture with Plastisud in China, thus becom- ing itself our competitors, we have had to look for alternatives. Here at our headquarters in Switzerland we have added to our stock of machin- ery some new Elion machines from Netstal. At our plant in Mexico we have chosen BMB from Italy because there are already 160 of their injec- tion moulding machines in Mexico and the service is good there. However, in many countries this also applies to Netstal, Husky, Sumitomo and Engel. Nothing puts more pressure on the machine availability than inadequate service facilities, regardless of how fast it is. PETplanet: Many machinery manufacturers seem to have the clo- sures sector in their sights. Why do you think this is? Surely the market is well catered for at present? Corvaglia: Good question. The best thing you can do is to ask the machine manufacturers themselves. As you said, by comparison to the preform, the market is consider- ably smaller in size. One mould for caps will produce about two to four times as many caps as a preform mould; this means that the market size for cap machines is only half and it will be split again when you consider that more than half of the soft drink closures still come in two parts and, purely because of this, are manufactured on compression equipment. This means that the market for closure equipment using injection moulding techniques may well be around a quarter the size of the preform machine business. As indicated above, you need to keep the overall life cycle of the cap in view all the time; a closure system is more complex and challenging than a preform system. This is, for example, also demonstrated by the fact that you need around twice as many people in the back office to handle a closure project than you need for a preform system. PETplanet: Keyword here is market size. You were one of the first to sell a complete closures system to China in 1992; in the meantime other toolmakers are overtaking you in the largest beverage market in the world. Corvaglia: China is a highly spe- cific topic. We were the first company to assume overall responsibility from the development phase right through to applying the closure on the bottle. With this (at that time) unique con- cept, selling equipment was an easy matter. Sacmi from Italy, coming from the liner compression moulding busi- ness, reacted well here and devel- oped a fully integrated programme based on compression moulding. Their start as far as two component closures were concerned made it pos- sible for them to service this market practically on their own for a good long time. PETplanet: How has the market in China developed over the years? Corvaglia: The market has made a rapid transition to single-piece closures and it was precisely this that had been our specialised area since the foundation of the company over 20 years ago. Coinciding with this switchover has been an increas- ing demand for injection moulding systems. The reason lies in the fact that, in the injection moulding pro- cess, the closures are all set to go into the box once they have been extracted from the mould and it is precisely this that makes the injection moulding process very efficient. In the compression process you have the advantage of more efficient manu- facturing since there is no hot runner distributor needed, but you always face subsequent processes such as slitting and folding of the tamper evi- dent band. In this second process it is practically impossible to avoid any dust developing. The leading injec- tion moulding machine manufacturers who were anxious to acquire a share in this market through collaborating or acquiring mould makers have not only eroded the prices for superior and effi- cient overall concepts but have also combined the two disadvantages of injection and compression moulding in a new system. The reason is that they use the injection moulding process to manufacture the body section and then cut and fold the tamper-evident band in subsequent processes. In a compression moulding process the cap shell goes oriented to the next station. Doing the injection as a first step you have to handle the closure with additional robotics or use sorting units between the processes. All this only happens because these compa- nies are viewing the production of clo- sures through the eyes of a machine manufacturer with the specific aim of selling their material. PETplanet: What are the implica- tions for your projects in the Chinese market? Corvaglia: As regards projects for major brand owners, where actual performance is a stipulation, we have carried on implementing projects, also in China. Because actual performance in China today does not really count for everybody, either on the plant or in the filling process, the price of the equipment is the top priority. This, in my view, is set to change in the next few years and then the status quo will once again be different for us in China. PETplanet: Many thanks! www.corvaglia.ch