PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2020

CAPS & CLOSURES 37 PETplanet Insider Vol. 21 No. 09/20 www.petpla.net at other markets. UCL has the advan- tage that it can go to sectors that are new to it and demonstrate that it already has the technological exper- tise necessary to help clients take the steps forward that they need, in order to remain competitive. Technology transfer “If you have something that has the high levels of performance required for CSD then looking at a dish soap, for example, the technol- ogy is going to transfer quite easily,” he observed. But it isn’t all plain sail- ing. Smith himself had to fly over to Latin America and buy a particular non-edible oil product, because it was impossible to get hold of in Europe and its viscosity was different from what was available at home, which meant that its pouring spout required a slightly modified solution to ensure effective performance. The experience underlines the importance of never taking anything for granted. UCL sees one of its core strengths in aiding the drive to sustainability is in reducing the amount of material that has to be dealt with, in the first place. The company were pioneers of single-piece cap technology, for example. As well as reducing manu- facturing steps and material usage, removing the need for sealing by means of an internal gasket or liner, which was often difficult to remove if it was attached to the bottle top, helped to improve recyclability. “We replaced that liner with a seal integrated into the one-piece closure design. I think that is the UCL core USP: innovation. That kind of thinking is ingrained in us; we look to simplify, to remove the unnecessary” he said. Innovation: growing market share, enhancing brand reputation Innovation is a key route to profit- ability and growing market share, according to market intelligence reports from as long as 20 years ago; Gartner Research put the ‘innovation advantage’ – the period when inno- vating companies have the market to themselves, at nine months. However, no-one has a monopoly on good ideas and even patents won’t provide total protection against ruthless operators. But innovation undoubtedly helps to strengthen brand image. “Patents offer a degree of pro- tection and we always protect our licences by patenting designs,” he continued. “Innovation is where you can steal a little bit of a march and buy yourself time. And I think that if you’re first to market or become seen as pioneers, you develop a reputa- tion. People do come to us because of our reputation for that ‘on the front foot’ innovation.” But Mark makes clear that innovation is not a case of inspiration coming fully-formed to the finished article. “We will normally spend a year at least, maybe two, developing an idea, though where necessary we have delivered solutions in a few months” he said. “If the idea was, say 10%; then the realisation is 90%. The frus- tration and the development journey, the ups and downs, those make up the majority of the effort. And we’ve have many ideas that just don’t see the light of day .” New challenges Today’s challenges are led by the growth of E-commerce, particularly home deliveries, and new regulations regarding tethered caps, being intro- duced by the EU from 2024. “Current closure designs are gen- erally fine to be delivered to super- markets and put on the shelf,” Mark explained. When bottles are being delivered to consumers’ front doors, they need security, to be able to see that none of their bottles have been opened, which brings us into the field of tamper-evident closures. “One of the offerings could involve an evolu- tion of our two-piece sports closure, which has been proven to work with drink products. Dish soap is not pres- surised in the same way as a car- bonated soft drink, it doesn’t have to comply with BSDA (British Soft Drinks Association) standards – but soap behaves in a different way to water, which causes congealing issues and pouring problems. So, we may think we have transferable technology but it’s not as simple as that; we have dif- ferent challenges.” So, in addition to being able to transfer some technology, it is inno- vating and developing new solutions in the area of, for example, homecare products. The USA market uses a lot of extrusion blow-moulded bottles for its detergents, which has led UCL to develop sealing solutions for HDPE blow-moulded extrusion packages. In contrast to the precise finishes of PET bottles, HDPE blow-moulded packages are guillotined off at the top; there’s a lot of variation and flash is common. The current solution is a PP cap and liner – the old two-piece situation. “We have done single-piece before, obviously. What we have done now is to create a single piece solution, where the seal mimics the behaviour of a liner and takes up the variability in the HDPE,” Mark said. “We’ve got a number of advanced prototypes that have been on suc- cessful trials with some large com- panies in the USA. We are getting to UCL has designed and launched a new, two-piece sports closure system that incor- porates a tethered cap. It meets 1881 standards and existing UCL systems can be converted to feature this design. The company is also in advanced stage develop- ment of a flip-top 2925 tethered cap water closure, which will be compatible with existing and standard 2925 threaded finishes.