PETpla.net Insider 04/ 2013

NEWS 8 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 04/13 www.petpla.net Amcor flourishes in Florida Amcor Rigid Plastics has announced a $20 million expan- sion of its southeastern U.S. bottle manufacturing operation in Orlando, Florida. The move comes in response to strong market demand for beverage and pharmaceutical packaging. Amcor says the investment will also enable the centralisation of preform manufacturing and warehousing while improving logistics and shipping efficiencies. The company recently relocated from an existing 15,000m² plant near the Florida Turnpike to a new, leased 45,000m² facility within the Airport Industrial Park of Orlando, just a few miles from the former location. The multi-million- dollar investment enabled the conversion of an unfinished shell structure into functional space for manufacturing, ware- housing and offices. The new facility is already operational, producing hot fill and cold fill PET bottles for beverages such as sports drinks and orange juice, along with PET carafes for citrus beverages and HDPE pharmaceutical containers. Amcor will manufacture a majority of its preforms in house at Orlando and the new facility will eliminate the need for three offsite warehousing sites. The site has room for future expansion. www.amcor.com Breathe easy Plastic Technologies, Inc. (PTI) has launched a free app, which calculates the oxygen permeation of food and bever- age packaging structures and containers. The PackLifeO2 app is based on the M-Rule model and is available on iPhone/iPad and Android platforms. It has been designed as a handy calculator for specific materials and combinations and is not presented as an absolute decision-making tool. The app contains five input sections – material, layers, con- centration, conditions, results – that are designed to help the user quickly input data and obtain oxygen permeation results for their specific container. Simple touchscreen procedures cover package dimen- sions; materials – including PET, PP, PE, PC and nylon 6 – and their thickness; initial parameters; and period of time for study. Results are displayed on a graph. PTI describes PackLife02 as suitable for pretty much everyone involved in the package selection process. The new app is in addition to existing PTI apps: the PET Hydrolytic Degradation Nomo- graph and PET Blend Calculator. They are all available from the iTunes app store and Android Play Store. www.containerscience.com www.plastictechnologies.com