PETpla.net Insider 11 / 2015

PACKING / PALLETISING 36 PET planet insider Vol. 16 No. 11/15 www.petpla.net Tour Sponsors: Preform Technologies by Waldemar Schmitke February 19, 2015 - We met: James M. Sheely, President Established in 1985, this division has specialised in small batch production and specials for sophisticated preforms and containers, predominantly for PET and PP applications. Here on-site we make the acquaintance of James M. Sheely, President, Preform Technologies. There are 18 people employed at this site which operates 24 hours a day with an annual production volume, 2014 of 22 million PET preforms. F.r.t.l.: Waldemar Schmitke and James M. Sheely, in front of the Husky X-Line preform machines In effect it is the extended produc- tion arm of Plastics Technologies. According to James M. Sheely, “it is when a customer has additional capacity over and above actual prototyping (design development and single cavities for preforms and bottles) that we come in. For exam- ple, instances may include a market launch or special requirements in terms of colour, function or mate- rial in volume production. We work hand in hand with PTI and Phoenix Technologies and it is from them that our orders primarily come. However, there are also cases where a cus- tomer may order capacities directly from us, either because he has no capacity of his own or the project is still too small to make their own pro- duction worthwhile.” “Nevertheless, it is always a matter of specific sophisticated pack- aging, not commodity items. Techno- logically speaking, here in Swanton we have at our disposal, injection moulding technology for preforms and other injection moulded parts such as caps, single stage technology for PET (ISB), stretch blow moulding technology (2-stage) and extrusion blow moulding technology,” James M.Sheely added. The fleet of machines is made up of the following:  3 x Husky X-Line Preform machines up to 48 cavities  1 x Sidel SBO 2 stretch blow moulding machines  4 x Nissei ASB 250  1 x extrusion blow moulding machines (multi-layer) By contrast, the corresponding mould units (preform moulds, blow moulds) belong to the customers, apart from a few exceptions. James M. Sheely continues: “As a result we are driven not by the con- sumers but by the processors who are looking to solve the problem of reducing costs for the plastics packag- ing materials or to enhance the value of the packaging. Our customer base includes not only smaller individual processors but also major brand owners, who take advantage of the services we offer. Alongside PET and PP we also process Tritan, PEN, r-PET from Phoenix Technologies, LLC, HDPE and nylon for multi-layer extrusion blow moulding. One of our specialist areas is plastics tinting (predominantly liquid), which we incorporate into a large number of our projects.” The potential offered in terms of co-injection solutions for PET is very small; here the trend is moving in the direction of blends. PEN, with its very positive shelf life characteristics, is very interesting as a packaging mate- rial but is too expensive. For this reason the applications tend to be limited. R-PET applica- tions are increasing although the price today is at the virgin level. Although the trend is predominantly inclined towards blending (in around 25% of cases) there is also a demand for the 100% solutions. As James M. Sheely puts it, this is a good example of PTI family thinking: “The material comes from Phoenix, the preforms from us and the design from PTI.” www.preformtechnologies.com