PETpla.net Insider 01+02 / 2019

LABELLING PET planet Insider Vol. 18 No. 0/17 www.petpla.net 35 Sleeving PET detergents and body care products A second skin for PET containers Detergents and body care brands are demanding more and more sophisticated container shapes and new styles of decoration, making the packaging industry face new chal- lenges. Finpac Italia has developed a machine capable of applying sleeves on special bottle shapes, on filled or empty bottles at speeds of up to 70,000 bph. Sleeving can be tricky on any shape which is not round: it is vital to maintain the artwork on bottle panels correctly with minimum positioning tolerance. The correct sleeve position is given by a combination of factors during the application and shrinking process. The Finpac system is capa- ble of bottle and sleeve orientation at the same time, ensuring the sleeve is applied in the best possible condition. A progressive positioner fine-tunes the application of the sleeve without any shock or rotation. Before or after filling? Sleeving after filling is easier: bot- tles are more stable, rigid, resistant to high shrink temperatures. Sleev- ing before filling is more difficult but can be an advantage for a number of reasons:  the cap can cover the top part of the sleeve, hiding any ‘’empty gap’’ between sleeve and cap;  different bottles blown by different lines can be conveyed to a single sleeving line;  a stand-alone sleeving line may ease blown bottles stock keeping  bottles blowers can deliver already decorated bottles, offering end users a lean manufacturing process Underlap There are shapes which require underlapping to achieve the most attractive result: the sleeve can shrink a few millimetres under the bottle base to hide any ‘’smiling effect’’. The bottle is lifted and vacuumed (if empty) at the same time, to allow the sleeve shrink under its base and to keep it stable. In Finpac’s new system, application and underlapping opera- tions take place in the same frame, which is a very compact solution. Shrinkage Body sleeve shrinkage is exe- cuted by low-pressure and low-tem- perature steam, saving energy, with no risk of destabilising / damaging empty plastic containers and with no sleeve rotation. www.finpac.it Households and softeners sleeved after filling Body care sleeved with underlap before filling MANAGE PREFORM VARIANCES CONTACT US TODAY TO LEARN MORE! AGRINTL.COM | +1.724.482.2163 | SALES@AGRINTL.COM 1 MEASURE 2 CONTROL 3 OPTIMIZE Blowmolder management easy as . . . PROCESS PILOT ® Automatically manage preform variations to produce better, more consistent PET containers.