PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2013

PRODUCTS 85 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 09/13 www.petpla.net ProTec Polymer Processing GmbH Headquarters Stubenwald-Allee 9 64625 Bensheim/Germany Phone: +49 6251 77061-0 E-mail: sales@sp-protec.com Web: www.sp-protec.com Trendsetting solutions to upgrade your virgin and post-consumer polymers! Munich, Sept 16-20, 2013 Hall B3, Booth 127 Saves space SMI has developed a stackable PET container it calls “neck-in bottle”, which is designed to save space, cut costs, optimise transport effectiveness and reduce waste. The new design features a much deeper hollow on the bottle base, which allows sev- eral layers of bottles to be directly stacked on each other, without any space between them. The necks on the lower bottles fully insert into the base hollow in those in the overly- ing layer. The standard design for 5l bottles allows three layers per pallet; the ‘neck-in bottle” allows four layers. The new design eliminates the need for interlayer cardboard pads, which saves material costs and also reduces production waste caused by neck breakages during palletisation. SMI even claims that the visual appeal of the pallets is improved. The new container can be produced on either Smiform’s stand-alone stretch-blow moulding machines or on Ecobloc compact blow/fill/cap machines. www.smigroup.it Biodegradable caps Thermoplastic compound specialist API Spa and Sacmi, the Italian packaging machine company, have jointly devel- oped and produced a 100% biodegradable mineral water bottle cap. The product, which will be on show at drinktec and K 2013, was developed from a compound belonging to the Apinat bio range. Their chemical structure and versatil- ity allow these compounds to be processed using widely available technology; they are already in use in footwear, agriculture and packaging applications. Sacmi’s cap-making compression technology is able to adapt fully to the rheol- ogy and behaviour of the molten Apinat material. www.sacmi.com The new caps developed by API Spa and Sacmi are biodegrad- able and compostable