PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2019

PREFORM PRODUCTION PET planet Insider Vol. 19 No. 09/19 www.petpla.net 48 Niigon PET preform machines Prepared for the future Tour Sponsors: F.l.t.r. Rob Sicilia, Niigon VP PET Pre- forms and Harold Luttmann, Niigon CEO In the last part of our North American Road Show the way led us to good friends. At Niigon (formerly Athena) in Ontario we were warmly welcomed by Harold Luttmann, CEO Niigon, and Rob Sicilia, VP PET preforms. Niigon is an Aboriginal word meaning ‘for the future’. Robert Schad chose this name to emphasise that this company is prepared for the future. We were very impressed with the new 155,000 square foot production hall. The plant was opened in 2016 and provides an energy efficient and automated infrastructure. It features geothermal heating and cooling, day- light harvesting LED lighting, auto- mated high density part storage and state of the art inspection equipment. “In 2010 we started to build rugged two platen injection mould- ing machines with two models, 150 t and 300 t,” explained Harold. “Pre- engineered options for stack and cube, two colour, unscrewing and PET provided proven performance and fast delivery for a wide range of applications. All machines come with a five year warranty. In 2017 we extended the product line with our first 500 t machine.” At the time of our visit there were three stack machines on the production floor, each with two injection units, one at each end. “For PET pre- form applications, you can run two standard 96 cavity moulds in a 300 t stack machine” said Rob. “The two moulds can run different preforms, in dif- ferent colours, at the same cycle at the same time. It is very flexible. You can shut one mould down and service it while the other mould is run- ning.” At the far end of the production hall is the Lightsout operation. Here two PET systems run production for Canadian customers. A 150 t machine runs four different 24 cavity moulds all with a 38mm finish for Salbro, a food and beverage packaging company. The 300 t machine operates a 72 cavity 16g preform. “The Lightsout program enables us to run fully equipped pro- duction preform systems unattended to monitor and improve our designs to ensure we can provide our PET cus- tomers the lowest cost of ownership” explained Rob. “The energy consumption of our 150 t 24 cavity machine, robot, conveyors and dehumidifier today is 0.204Kwh/kg. The 300 t 72 cavity uses 0.189Kwh/kg. We are constantly looking at ways to reduce this even further.” Other development projects include one hour mould change time, a 50% reduction in cooling water flow and automated mould vent cleaning. Both of these PET systems use Yudo moulds. These moulds incor- porate Yudo’s latest developments include diffusion bonded stack compo- nents incorporating conformal cooling to improve cycle time and preform dimensional accuracy. In the hot runner, diffusion bond- ing technology has shown significant reductions in cavity-to-cavity weight variations, pressure drop and AA. “PET is the fastest growing segment of our business“ says Harold. “We welcome anyone in the PET preform business to visit Niigon and see these systems in operation for yourself.” www.niigonmachines.com www.yudo.com