PETpla.net Insider 03 / 2020

45 PRODUCTS PET planet Insider Vol. 21 No. 03/20 www.petpla.net PET products A PET bottle for craft beer “Beer … a high and mighty liquor,” said Gaius Julius Caesar, a famous beer lover. The drink’s origins go all the way back to ancient civilisa- tions but the manufacturing process has evolved. Beer was first brewed only for family or neighbourhood consumption; commercialisation came later. Today’s packaging is the latest step in that evolution. Today, beer in a plastic bottle is common in some coun- tries but novel in others. The fact that PET bottles quickly grow their market share shows that this type of packaging has several advantages. Do PET bottles “look right”? They can have glass-like appearance; they are transparent but also unbreakable. PET is resistant to damage and easy to trans- port. It is recyclable into other uses and has a much lower carbon footprint than glass, as PET Technologies’ joint project with Bierwelle Brewery dem- onstrates. Technology is what the two companies have in common: for brewing a malty beverage, on one side, and to blow-mould containers on the other. An elegant and resilient amber PET bottle is where two meet. PET Technologies developed the physical design; the decorative elements reflect Bierwelle’s corporate identity. The font used for the brand name confirms brand recognition. How is the bottle produced? Bierwelle’s craft brewery makes 31.4 g PET bottles on UPF-5 stretch blow moulding machines. Tests conducted at PET Technologies’ laboratory confirmed that the bottle can cope with 7-8bar internal pres- sure, without deformation. This is PET Technologies’ second project with Bierwelle. The first was an “authentic” container decorated with the views of the city of Chernihiv, the brewery’s birthplace. www.pet-eu.com Production monitoring with software solution Grafit 4.0 Digitisation, product tracking, iOT, artificial intelligence: in production, this involves using machine data to optimise and automate processes. The software solution Grafit 4.0 present the data of all connected machines in a clear, accessible form, and make it available to the operator for use and analysis. The data is displayed in real time, e.g. via the smartView app. It allows early detection, analysis and correction of errors. The central monitoring of the entire machine park offers a higher productivity, less production scrap and lower costs. The system is available for the complete Starlinger product range (machinery for the production of plastic fabric and for plastics recycling machinery). Machines of other manufacturers can be integrated as well by means of standardised interfaces. Grafit 4.0 possesses a clear data structure; in the future, it will be geared towards machine learning, which means that the system can be trained to detect errors at an early stage. The resulting predictive maintenance of the machines leads to higher machine uptime. The smartView app high- lights a user-friendly interface, which includes the option to individually adjust the menu bar. Popular features are push notifications, the storage of recipes, the export of data into a computer program or ERP system as well as limiting the access to machinery with an RFID lock. Online tutorials are available for operator training. www.starlinger.com