PETpla.net Insider 12 / 2016

TRADE SHOW REVIEW 28 PET planet Insider Vol. 17 No. 12/16 www.petpla.net KHS develops lightweight 0.5l PET bottle for beer and malt beer Same bottle, but lighter At the behest of a major German brewery, the systems supplier of filling and packaging technology KHS GmbH has developed the lightest 0.5l PET beer bottle in the company’s history to date. Thanks to the lightweighting expertise in the KHS Bottles & Shapes program, in the future bottles for beer and malt beer can be produced more cost effectively while saving resources. Here, KHS kept to its remit of not changing the bottle design. On the occasion of Brau Beviale, KHS presented the finished PET bottle which is, according to the company, not only of the highest quality but also much lighter than its predecessor. Despite the lower use of resources the lightweight PET bottles is said to boast undiminished high stability. “In order to achieve these optimum weight proper- ties we exploit the concentrated exper- tise in our Bottles & Shapes program. This allows us to save on materials in both the bottle body and thread,” explains Christian Rommel, project engineer for Bottles & Shapes, when talking about the design process. KHS has made the neck ring much smaller and reduced the wall thickness in the neck and thread. Optimising the thread has not affected the fitting accuracy and sealing properties of the standard PCO 1881 closures – in accordance with customer specifications. The pro- cessability on the existing line has also in comprehensive laboratory and production tests. Bottles & Shapes program The development of the bottle took place in the context of the KHS Bottles & Shapes program. This is an all-round bottle design service which starts with design options and ends with a ready- for-production bottle. The pro- gram includes the stages of design and marketing, mate- rial selection, barrier and filling requirements, preform design, CAD and FEM-sup- ported construction, devel- opment of the blow mould, laboratory testing, process control as well as material savings. www.khs.com not been impaired. KHS has now cut down the weight of the brew- ery’s previous 0.5l PET beer bottle by 1.6g to just 20.9g. On the malt beer PET bottles for filling, which have to be able to cope with a higher inter- nal pressure as the malt beer is pas- teurised, KHS was able to save 1.5g. The weight of this bottle thus dropped from 24g to 22.5g. The weight-opti- mised bottles were extensively tested according to the given specifications Weight-optimised beer PET bottle, weighing 20.9g. MHT MOLD & HOTRUNNER TECHNOLOGY AG Your Machine - Our Solution 1996-2016 20 YEARS Mumbai, Dec 15-17 Booth 1-F38