PETpla.net Insider 07+08 / 2015

BOTTLE MAKING 23 PET planet insider Vol. 16 No. 07+08/15 www.petpla.net From the broker right through to injection moulding Paul Saltz in his warehouse Premium Sponsor Sponsors Salbro trades in all packaging materials that have anything to do with bottling. From bottles made from HDPE, glass, a very wide range of closures and dispenser labels and, of course, PET bottles. However, these are produced by Salbro themselves. The three Saltz brothers came to Canada in 1989 and continued the company founded by their grandfather in South Africa as brokers for packag- ing in North America. More than ten years ago they decided to produce the PET bottles themselves. With the help of Werner Amsler they rapidly succeeded in building up their own production facility. Although Amsler had started as a piecework contrac- tor producing the required number of bottles, it was not long before the first machine appeared on the floor at Salbro. It looked a bit lonely so Paul Saltz purchased two lines. After only six weeks there was no more capacity left on the second line either. A further line followed nearly every year. Now there are seven injection moulding lines in Woodbridge, each produc- ing on two cavities. Altogether they produce 15 million bottles each year. Back-up is provided by two Nissei ASB preform lines which are capable of filling up to 24 cavities. Paul swears by the 2-stage pro- cess and particularly for the some- times small orders amounting to only 10,000 bottles. Standard preforms may be used which means that the customer only needs to pay for the blow moulding mould and not, as in the case of the 1-stage process, the preform moulds too. But, even where large quantities are concerned, for Paul, there is only the 2-stage pro- cess. Here he is able to achieve fast production; the cycle time is depend- ent on the stretch blow moulding pro- cess and not on the preform process which is clearly longer. And hence Amsler has now joined forces with an Amsler line. At the end there were operatives packing the bottles in boxes or on trays. For Salbro there is no point in automat- ing this stage. It takes less than half an hour to carry out a mould change without a preform carrier change. Setting up a robot would take a huge amount of time. Paul is thinking about deploying automation in 2016 but only for continuous operation. Salbro’s basic role model is char- acterised by flexibility and speed. Their own bottle production operation creates samples within 48h that can be guaranteed to impress customers’ customers. Salbro is able to ensure that a warehouse with more than 500 octabins incorporating a wide range of performs can be dealt with so as handle stretch blow moulding orders practically overnight. Testimony to the fact that, with so much flexibility, creativity is not being neglected is Salbro’s success in walk- ing off with first prize in the SPE Blow Moulding Award for its triangular bottle in 2014. www.salbrobottle.com