PETpla.net Insider 12 / 2013

BOTTLE MAKING 22 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 12/13 www.petpla.net Sipa makes a splash in Japanese (home delivery) market with big water bottles Water-cooler moment Two Japanese companies specialising in home and office delivery of large water bot- tles have recently added to their capacity with Sipa SFL 2/2 twin-cavity linear stretch-blow moulding machines. Cosmo Water and Water Direct both took delivery of their new lines through Sipa’s partner in Japan, Itochu Machine-Technos Corporation, a specialist equip- ment importing and engineering company. Sipa collaborated in fine tuning the designs of the 12l bottles, originated by Cosmo Water, to enable them to be produced more efficiently on the new machines. Some minor modifications were also made to the ovens on the machines themselves. Bottle design What makes the bottles a little bit different is that they are collapsible. Normally with large water bottles - often referred to as water cooler bottles (even though the bottle sits on top of a server that does not nec- essarily cool the water) - when the tap underneath is turned on, water comes out and then a big bubble of air goes in to fill the space vacated. It makes a satisfying ‘gloop’ sound as it does so, but it may also carry germs into the headspace. With the new bottles, a one-way valve stops the air getting in, and as the bottle is drained, it collapses in on itself. No satisfying ‘gloop’ sound, but no germs either. Itochu and Sipa have engi- neered the bottles - different designs for each company - so that they collapse into compact fat discs that take up as little space as pos- sible. This is important because the bottles are one-way types, unlike more conventional ones that are used many times over. Instead, the compacted bottles go straight into the recycling stream, and being small is important for storage and transport. The bottles have been designed with thin walls and special ribbing to make them collapse in a predictable fashion. The bottles weigh just 130g, and Water Direct will soon produce a bottle that is even lighter than that. By contrast, a five-gallon multi-trip bottle weighs over 650g. Line design Using the Sipa SFL 2/2 stretch- blow moulding equipment, Cosmo Water and Water Direct obtained a productivity of 700 containers/cavity/h. The equipment for Cosmo Water, which went into commercial produc- tion in April, is connected directly to a rinsing/filling/capping block supplied by an Italian company. Mr Arakawa, Technical Director of Cosmo Water expressed satisfaction with the pro- ductivity of the line. “Production is consistently high”, he says. He also commented favourably on the com- pact design of the SFL 2/2. “Instal- lation and commissioning was also rapid and trouble-free”, he added. Water Direct’s new line was com- missioned in June and connected to downstream equipment from a local supplier. On top of this, Mr Arakawa continued, “the linear configuration of the SFL equipment gave us more flex- ibility in the layout of the ovens.This Sipa delivered two linear stretch blow moulding machines... ...for the production of 12l water bottles... ...to two Japanese companies: ...