PETpla.net Insider 03 / 2015

NEWS 8 PET planet insider Vol. 16 No. 03/15 www.petpla.net Reconditioning of 192 cavity PET preform tool after ten years A reliable endurance runner: ten years ago, Western Con- tainer Corporation installed their first 192-cavity tool from MHT Mold & Hotrunner Technology AG, Hochheim a. Main, Ger- many. The tool was installed in a Netstal PET-Line 6000 system and has subsequently produced some 3 billion preforms. Roger Kerr, Vice President of Engineering & Manufactur- ing Technology at Western Container Corporation (WCC), is delighted with the tool-machine combination: “The availability of the system is very high, and with 192 cavities we have the large output volume we need for our business.” Western Con- tainer produces preforms for Coca-Cola with five sites in the US, and operates three of MHT’s 192 cavity moulds. MHT has a total of ten 192 cavity tools in the market worldwide. The original preform design is being superseded with a new lightweight design, and once again MHT has been selected to provide the tooling for WCC’s 192 cavity sys- tems.The new 22 gram preform has a lightweight PCO 1881 thread finish, and MHT has built complete new cold halves incorporating the latest stack design technology. Although the first tool is now ten years old, it is technically completely up to date. Despite its size, the 192-cavity tool is surprisingly user-friendly in its start-up performance. Generally, the 3rd shot generates the needed preform quality. The MHT founder and longtime Technical Manager, Werner Plass, and his successor Christian Wagner came to visit the customer for the hand-over of the new moulds. The collaboration between MHT and Western Container goes back many years and covers tools for Netstal and Husky machines. www.mht-ag.de P.E.T. Engineering: sales up, two awards and major investment in 2015 15 years in business, 2014 marked by important goals and a new year full of promises: these few words sum up the past, present and future of a small company that, in a short period of time, has become an important player in the field of design and commercialisation of PET containers for international beverage brands. P.E.T. Engineering Srl closed 2014 with a turno- ver of EUR 7.5 million, consolidating the good results achieved in 2013, when the company recorded a 45% increase over 2012. With an increase by 45.3% over 2013, 20.5% of the company’s sales come from China. Due to the strong growth, the company also attended the China Brew China Beverage for the first time. And after Moscow, the company opened its second branch in the city of Shanghai. The ongoing commitment to research was recog- nised in Italy with the “Imprese per Innovazione – Andrea Pininfarina” award, with P.E.T. Engineering being entered among the 20 most innovative companies in Italy. The company also received the World Beverage Innovation Award in the “Best bottle in PET” category, with Devin – Crystal Line, a PET bottle with a premium appearance and imitation glass finish addressed to the Horeca sector. To better support team work, the company has also decided to invest, not only in the purchase of state of the art machinery and software, but also in its own technol- ogy centre. An investment of around EUR 2.5 million will provide the staff with new laboratories, larger prototype production and assembly areas, as well as relaxation areas with a fitted gym. www.petengineering.com Holistic packaging approach helps to streamline development process When it comes to plastic packaging development, compa- nies can now benefit from a seamless structure-to-branding approach. The newly-announced alliance of marketplace leaders R&D/Leverage and Hughes Design Group offers packaging expertise across all key development phases, from consumer research, concept, brand development to go-to-market execution. The full-spectrum offering helps to streamline the development process and eliminates the costly, cumbersome, and frustrating package design silos that often throttle speed-to-market and yield sub-optimal packaging. R&D/Leverage USA, headquartered in Missouri, ser- vices the food and beverage, home and personal care, and healthcare industries. R&D/Leverage states that it is the only company to offer both structural brand development and mould manufacturing capabilities. Structural brand devel- opment includes upfront research such as retail audits that include trend and color study, ethnographic research, con- sumer focus groups, concept development, validation, and implementation. Mould manufacturing capabilities include full mould manufacturing for PET tooling, IBM tooling, injection moulds, as well as unit tool development, testing, validation, and training. Hughes Design Group is an award-winning strategic visual branding and packaging design firm headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut. The company is sought out by leading national consumer package goods clients and ascending brands across many industries and categories, for its exper- tise in brand identity, packaging, merchandising and new product development. www.rdleverage.com www.hugheslink.com Read more Ne ws: www.petpla .net