PETpla.net Insider 11 / 2014

EDITOUR REPORT 16 PET planet insider Vol. 15 No. 11/14 www.petpla.net Moulding - Injection or Compression? by Waldemar Schmitke Sacmi Imola S.C. Today we’re visiting the Sacmi Group in Imola. Sacmi has a long-standing corporate tradition; the company was launched in 1919 with a starting capital of 4.500 Lire (2 euros in today’s money) and just nine people and, despite economic and political turmoil, has succeeded in growing on a world- wide scale. It now has just under 4,000 employees and in 2012 reported a turnover of €1.243mil- lion. Its development has been driven by the core business of machines and complete production lines for ceramics (tiles), which still account for over 50% of trading volumes. Other mainstays are packaging machines for beverages and foodstuffs, machines for plastic closures and PET preforms, injection moulding machines and inspection machines. Of interest to us is what may be defined as the second biggest division at Sacmi, the beverage division. Here we find machines for preforms with conventional injection moulding, machines for plastic closures using the compres- sion process, rotary stretch blow moulding machines with output capacities of up to 60,000 bottles per hour, filler lines complete with cappers with up to 216 filling valves, including some in block format with the blow moulding machine (combo), labellers, downstream equipment for packaging and palletising and the corresponding inspection systems. Here at this meeting we are confining ourselves to preform and closure cap machines. Of particular interest to us, especially as far as preform machines are concerned, is the use of injection moulding or the compression pro- cess and, as regards closure cap machines, we are keen to talk about the trend towards a move away from 2-piece closures to the one-piece variant. Here, at the Imola plant, we are meeting Moraldo Masi, Business Manager of the Beverages – PET Business Unit and Massimo Gani, the Closures Sales Manager. IPS preform systems Moraldo Masi explains: “At the start of the new cen- tury, Sacmi decided to diversify its business and identi- fied the beverage sector as the one of greatest interest as it is, amongst other factors, also quite ‘close’ to the closures world. It was thus decided to boost the product portfolio via both takeovers and the development of new technology. The preforms sector was developed along two different lines:  conventional technology, injection, by beginning a devel- opment programme that made use of the presses made by the recently acquired Negri Bossi group.  the development of a totally new product, that exploited the principles used in the plastic closures sector – that is, compression”. Moraldo Masi continues: “This application of compres- sion in PET preforms proved to be extremely difficult and complex for various reasons, not least because of the fact that the PET injection world has, during the last ten years, made enormous progress in terms of performance. Today, the project is still very much alive, albeit sub- stantially revised since we are now preparing a rotary single-stage plant prototype which sees traditional rotary stretch-blow moulding applied to new preform compres- sion technology, also rotary. The first plant will be installed in Italy in the Spring of 2015 and will be able to manufac- ture bottles starting from resin at a maximum output rate of 30,000 bph with 48 cavities”. Moraldo Masi went on: “A validated product that is currently selling on all markets is the new IPS preform injection press. “In 2012 the first preform injection moulding system (IPS) with a clamping force of 220t integrated unloading system and post-cooling and a 48-cavity preform mould from the company’s own mould output was launched on the market. “We made the right decision”, says Moraldo Masi, “as we have been able to sell 20 preform systems f.l.t.r.: Waldemar Schmitke, PETplanet, Moraldo Masi, Bever- ages & PET B.U. Business Manager and Alexander Büchler in front of an ISP Preform system in the assembly bay.v