PETpla.net Insider 05 / 2013

EDITOURS REPORTS 22 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 05/13 www.petpla.net September 5, 2012 Inter-PET, Ukraine We met: Alexander Gaponenko, Plant Manager From used PET bottles to PET preforms, everything under one roof Inter-PET manufacture PET preforms for use in technical applications. Amorphous flakes are produced from used PET bottles, in a subsequent step pellets and finally processing takes place on a preform injection moulding machine. The manufacture of the 12mm-sized PET flakes is carried out in their own factory on a recycling system. For reasons of safety, we were not allowed to view the installation. Switch cabinet from Erema with Siemens control In the system PET bottles that have been compressed into bales are shredded, foreign matter is separated out and washed. The interim product is amorphous flakes. In the next stage, the Vacurema system from Erema pro- cesses the amorphous flakes into pellets. In a high vacuum the flakes are decontaminated und condensed to a higher IV level and melted directly in a de-gassing extruder com- plete with vacuum de-gassing. The extruded strands are conveyed to the granulator via a water bath and cut to form pellets. The extruder installation has a capacity of 200kg/h. Mr Gaponenko is particularly proud of the Siemens control and the Siemens motors which are a feature of the Erema system. These had been in operation for eleven years with- out breaking down. In the next stage crystallisation of the amorphous pellets takes place with de-dusting on a sepa- rate system in a 4-hour rhythm. Now crystallised, the pel- lets are available on an injection moulding machine for the standard preliminary drying and processing procedure. The material dryer on the injection moulding machine installed operates with a proportional valve and is able to take up PET raw materials and mix them. Preform production takes place on a Husky 16-component index machine with a preform format. According to Mr Gaponenko, depending on the customer requirement, up to 100% own manufac- ture pellets are processed into PET preforms.These are intended for use exclusively in the technical packaging sector, such as for example, engine oil containers. From the used PET bottle to the PET preform. A string of con- secutive processes within a well laid-out area. www.interpet.com.ua September 5, 2012 Slavutich Brewery, Carlsberg We met: Maxim Bugrov, Head of Packaging Plant Anastasiia Oguzlimanova, Interpreter The Editourmobil has brought us safely to the Slavutich Brew- ery. F.l.t.r.: Anastasiia Oguzlimanova, Maxim Bugrov and Walde- mar Schmitke Switching from the standard PCO 28 to the lightweight PCO 1881 does not require any brand new equipment. Bugrov Maxim, Head of the Bottling Plant at the Slavutich Brewery in Zaporishsha, demonstrates that it will even work with equipment that was not originally designed for it. The Slavutich Brewery concentrates on beer produc- tion and packaging using recyclable cans and PET. Forty years ago, production amounted to around 0.7million hl, now, 3.3 million hl are despatched from the plant annually. The company has a 28% share of the Ukrainian market. If we add the production of the other two Carlsberg brewer- ies in the Ukraine, their combined share of the market will be over 50%. Carlsberg has only had its hands completely on the tiller for the past two years; before this the brewery belonged to the BBH (Balik Brewery Holding), which sold all its beer-brewing activities in Eastern Europe to Carls- berg and Heineken. For five years now, Maxim Bugrov has been respon- sible for supervising the filling plants. There are two PETs in operation, each with a capacity of 20,000bph, two glass recyclables each with a capacity of 50,000 b/h and one KEG plant. Although the output of the PET plants is nominally less, they package 57% of the volume of beer. Only 0.5l and 0.33l volumes go into glass whereas, for PET, they package all sizes up to 2.5l. Almost everything comes from KHS, only the stretch blow moulders still come from SIG (Blomax 14 and Blomax 16). Not that this really counts, since Corpoplast is now part of KHS. The odd one out, so to speak, in not being KHS, is a shrink packer from SMI and a labelling machine from Krones. “The SNU equipment was a left over from an old system; we bought the labelling machine new“, is how Bugrov explains the non- KHS machines to us. The PET systems date back to 2007 and we were amazed to learn that Bugrov himself had converted all bottle sizes up to 2l to the lightweight PCO1881 closure in March. A current argument in the sector against the 1881 is that only new plants are said to be able to operate with the necessary precision to process