PETpla.net Insider 10 / 2015

PACKING / PALLETISING 36 PET planet insider Vol. 16 No. 10/15 www.petpla.net At Tech-Long’s Chinaplas booth: (f.r.t.l.) Johann Lange-Brock, PETplanet Insider, Sushi Lee, Techlong, Hui Yi,Techlong, Liu Yang, Techlong and Kay Barton, PETplanet Insider Tech-Long Packaging Machinery Co, Ltd., or “Tech-Long” for short, a company based in Guangzhou which has been listed on the stock exchange since 2008, has been making equipment for the PET beverages industry since 1998. The turnkey solutions (the company sees its products as such) are designed to service all sectors of the beverages and liquid food industry both in the form of stand-alone machines as well as entire production lines. Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Danone and InBev have been engaged in collaboration with Tech-Long over a number of years, which means that they are thus in a position to influence the development of the equipment they require. More than 1,200 employees work at Tech- Long in premises occupying around 170,000m 2 . At Chinaplas, the company show- cased its fifth generation of the “G5” PET Stretch Blow Moulding Machine, which has been rolled out for the first time at the NPE Orlando. The Rotary Blower is fitted with 6 to 24 cavities for a range comprising 0.25 litre to 2.5 litre bottles with a diameter of 50mm-116mm and a height of 100- 320mm. Tech-Long state the per- cavity output of the G5 as 2,400bph for water/CSD and 1,800bph for hotfill bottles with a volume of 500ml. Innovative features of the 5th Gen- eration include an increase in speed due to servo-driven stretch rods and mechanical seal, energy savings of 40-55% with high pressure air, as well as energy savings of 10-15% inside the heating unit. As far as noise reduction is concerned, the level in the new series has fallen to less than 83dB. The system is of modular structure and thus offers the possibility of more rapid mould changing as well as faster service and maintenance work. www.tech-long.com This means that Tech-Long is one of the few manufacturers worldwide that are able to supply machines for the whole of the process chain, from bottle manufacture all the way along the line to the filled, shelf-ready prod- uct. To date, the very respectable total of 500 turnkey lines have been installed in more than 40 countries and has filed more than 270 different patent applications. In 2014 turnover amounted to US$153.76m. Numer- ous well-known companies such as 5th Generation PET blow moulding machine