PETpla.net Insider 10 / 2019

PACKAGING PET planet Insider Vol. 20 No. 10/19 www.petpla.net 12 A review of developments over the last 20 years PET packaging in non-food areas by Kay Barton Although we are primarily a magazine for the beverage industry, it was only a matter of time before the triumphal march of PET would prevail in other areas of packaging. Depending on the intended use, significant advantages such as lower manufacturing or material costs, user- friendly properties – such as precision dosing of contents by pressure on flexible containers and high recycling capability, together with brilliant appearance in the end product – are attractive. Consequently, we began reporting on the growing food and non-food markets for PET at an early stage. This field has developed from being covered by individual articles in the early 2000s, to an extra section in PETplanet Insider magazine, through to reports on newly-launched products in these areas along with news from the industry, covering both suppliers and users. As in the beverages sector, the change from other packaging materi- als to PET for household goods, per- sonal care and beauty care, cleaning agents and chemicals, etc., presents new challenges in terms of produc- tion, appearance and feel. An extreme example is the contrast between PET cosmetic containers and beverage bottles. These segments could hardly be more different in terms of technical requirements, production speed and material costs. Today, new and incred- ible designs, which were unthinkable until a few years ago, appear in both areas almost every week. The tech- nical starting points are completely different, however. In the modern two-stage process for beverages, lightweights, minimum cycle times and highly automated workshops are the norm. In short: a highly efficient use of materials and energy with the maxi- mum output of containers, with cus- tomer-specific designs, which should maximise appeal to the consumer in terms of appearance and haptics, must be achieved. This is the case in all price seg- ments. Even in highly price-sensitive areas, such as the popular single- serve area for water from smaller, local bottlers, where manufacturer margins are naturally small, the individual product should not be lost in the variety of the market. In the highly-priced cosmetics sector, which is dominated by single-stage systems, the same aspiration of the manufacturers prevails, even though the costs of manufacturing and the use of materials are in completely different leagues. Customers pur- chasing a cosmetic product costing around € 100, for example, expect premium packaging which, in terms of its design, has a period of home use lasting months and. in some cases: years. For such customers, luxury takes centre stage, a factor that is reflected in the contents, as well as the packaging. Completely individualised neck finishes are one such example. With the migration of several world brands in cosmetics and beauty care from glass to PET and PETG, the demands and expectations placed on the end product have been, and remain, correspondingly high. In addition to the identification of the brand, the premium feel of a glass container in this segment should not be neglected under any circumstances. Ideally, buyers should not be able to detect any significant difference from a glass container, or whatever packaging pre- ceded it. Technically, this requires not only a complex moulding process but also a high quality material input, with the elimination of unwanted crystalli- sation during conversion, often paired with sophisticated shapes, colours and surface textures, using sophisti- cated masterbatches. The technical requirements for single-stage PET have developed in this direction in recent years and the associated PET market is growing steadily. While writing this report, I am look- ing at a high-gloss thick-walled box with an extra-thick base, which I was given at a meeting with Nissei ASB at the Chinaplas trade fair in 2015. It weighs in at 60 g, with a filling volume of 100ml, manufactured on a two-cav- ity system in a cycle time of 42 s. In technical terms, standard non- food consumer goods, such as house- hold cleaners and body care products, are both dependent on quantity, wall thickness and neck diameter. Here, too, the best possible customer expe- rience in terms of the packaging and user satisfaction is required. Over the years, the use of additives or barri- ers to prevent unwanted changes to or deterioration of products has been continuously improved, especially so in the case of transparent contain- ers in which the content takes centre stage, as with the beverages seg- ment. There is plenty to discover on these topics in the PETplanet Insider archive, and we have compiled some of them for you here. 1999 - 2004 The USA has certainly played a pioneering role in the adoption of PET in the non-beverages sector, with cos- metics and even perfumes with spray caps in PET first appearing in America as long ago as the early 2000s. In 2001, an advertisement from extru- sion blow mould manufacturer Bekum demonstrated production of a sham- poo bottle in its two-cavity Reheat Stretch Blow Moulder, which was designed for the processing of PET and PP bottles of up to 1 l.