PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2014

BOTTLE MAKING 18 PET planet insider Vol. 15 No. 09/14 www.petpla.net BOTTLE MAKING 18 Based on Bulgarian and Northern Irish technology New PET bottle design for beer The emerging company Vitalii and Son was given the complex task of exploring the opportunity to develop new PET bottle designs for the beer market. The Bulgarian company Carls- berg wished to change the size (diam- eter) of their bottles but to keep the volume of 2l and 3l. Reducing the bottle diameter meant that more bottles could be placed on each level on a stand- ardized pallet thus increasing the efficiency of each pallet. From a technical point of view, it was impor- tant to investigate how the bottle behaves in the production process – more specifically if the bottle would resist carbonation at 5.6 CO 2 /l. The second task was to examine whether the bottle would be able to handle both the logistic and the filling/capping issues upstream; this involved analysing the pressure and top load deformation. Vitalii and Son developed three new designs of 2l and 2,3l bottles for Pirinsko and Shumensko Carls- berg Bulgaria. Those designs differed from each other in diameter, label area size and bottom peta- loid configuration. The complexity of the task was intertwined with the aesthetic appearance of the bottle i.e if the engineers reduced the diameter the bottles would become taller and asymmetric. However, for marketing reasons, the lines and surfaces of the bottles had to be kept distinctive. Dr. Gary Menary, of Queen’s University in Belfast, simulated the required tests such as pressure and top load, material thickness and weighting. Following these detailed tests and investigations, involving applied numerical technologies for packaging innovation and performance, the conclusions about the 2l Pir- insko and Shumensko bottles, and the Pirnsko 2.3l bottle can be summarised as follows: Sports Closure Hot Fill Simpli Squeeze® valve Sensitive Beverage Dosing Aseptic Pouches Flip-Top Meet us at Hall 4 Stand 4-336 BrauBeviale 2014 Nov. 11-13, Nürnberg sensitive BEVERAGES