PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2018

BOTTLE MAKING 14 PET planet Insider Vol. 19 No. 09/18 www.petpla.net Preferential heating for the manufacture of round and oval PET bottles A clean deal with new PET detergent bottles bottle making By investing in a KHS InnoPET Blomax Series IV stretch blow moulder the North Africans have now consider- ably boosted their capacity and at the same time lent their containers a modern design which saves on materials. Sarl Amir 2000 and its over 225 employees are headquartered in the town of Sidi Chahmi in Oran Province, where its range of products is filled into bottles manufactured on site. In 2017 the com- pany sold 21,000 metric tons of deter- gent. As managing director Farouk Bordji considers the Algerian market to be more or less saturated, in the next few years he is planning to both develop new products and expand into the neighbor- ing African countries in particular. Sarl Amir 2000 products are among the high- quality brands found on the local super- market shelves, with buyers prepared to pay a slightly higher price for a better constant quality. For the manufacturer it goes without saying that this must be manifested not just in the detergent itself but also in the packaging. In 2016 Bordji thus decided to mod- ernise his production facilities and also increase capacity. At the time the stretch blow moulders the detergent manufac- turer was using – three older machines with a respective capacity of up to 1,000bph – had been procured from a Chinese engineering company; Sarl Amir 2000 was increasingly dissatisfied with the bottle quality and system availability. Round or oval “Our PET containers are made by our wholly owned subsidiary Probi- mex which operates out of the same site. From here the finished bottles are counted into exact quantities and taken to the filling shop next door,” Bordji explains when outlining operations. This special logistics setup means that production reliability in the stretch blow moulding process is thus of great impor- tance. “We therefore looked for a reliable machine which efficiently produces containers of a very high quality,” Bordji adds. Once initial contact had been established, KHS invited the business- man to Hamburg, Germany where he was impressed by the expertise which went into the design of high-quality PET bottles and by the KHS InnoPET Blomax Series IV stretch blow moulder. Personal talks on site soon revealed that the Alge- rians had found the right machine for their requirements, that KHS was able to give them a number of further benefits following extensive consultancy. As a result three bottle designs were also modernised with the help of the Bottles & Shapes program. The new stretch blow moulder in Sidi Chahmi passed its final acceptance test in November 2017 – and Bordji was very satisfied with the delivered machine. The KHS InnoPET Blomax Series IV is designed for the production of up to 12,000bph and enables both round and oval bottles to be processed using preferential heating (PH). This optional function is distinguished by the spe- cial construction of the preform heater. Fabian Partzsch, area product manager at KHS, is responsible for the customer and convinced him of the benefits of the technology. “With oval bottles the preform circumference has to be heated differently at various points to ensure optimum material distribution and thus a high bottle quality. Without preferen- tial heating the preform circumference is heated evenly all round in the stretch blow moulder,” specifies Partzsch. “This means that the areas of the container which come into contact with the blow mould first cool down before the others.” The result is that the PET hardens at these points and the material is distrib- uted unevenly. If, as is the case with preferential heating, a preform is heated selectively according to its later bottle shape, this undesired effect is compen- sated for and the perfect oval bottle is produced. Higher quality through active heating KHS has made this possible by installing a special heater section at the end of the heating segment. Here, the system first rotates the PET pre- forms through the heater to obtain a basic heating profile. In the downstream section rotation is stopped, giving the preform its selective heating profile. The new heater box specially developed for this application plays a big role here, transferring the required heating energy to the preform through two opposite heater levels. With this method KHS improves quality, especially regarding the mate- rial distribution and stability of the bottle. Another effect of preferential heating is that the intelligent technology allows material savings of up to several grams per bottle to be made. KHS offers prefer- ential heating as an option on every new InnoPET Blomax Series IV; the PH vari- ant can also be retrofitted into existing systems. Besides the machine’s unique technical selling point format change- Sarl Amir 2000 in Algeria produces laundry detergents for the home market. To this end, it has now invested in the first KHS InnoPET Blomax Series IV stretch blow moulder with preferen- tial heating for the manufacture of round and oval PET bot- tles. Sarl Amir 2000 produces some of the best-known brands in Algeria. It has several successful dishwashing detergents, window and bathroom cleaners and toilet cleansers. Amir Clean detergents for various applications