PETpla.net Insider 12 / 2020

CAPS & CLOSURES 34 PETplanet Insider Vol. 21 No. 12/20 www.petpla.net PackSys Global, Rüti, Switzerland We met: Mr Beat Rupp, CEO Mr Ueli Kobel, Group Leader Global Sales Closures Mr Thomas LeFevre, Vice President for Sales and Marketing Ms Murielle Erard, Head of Marketing Slitting for tethered caps For a long time PackSys Global AG in Rüti, Switzerland, has specialised in manufacturing machines for the slitting and folding of the tamper evident band seen on most beverage caps. For many years, slitting was a rather unspectacular technology. Caps made by compression moulding required slitting. Producers of caps using injection moulding could choose between slitting the tamper evident band or making it as part of the injection moulding process. Discussions about recycling rates and the circular economy show that PET bottles are among the most widely recycled types of packag- ing however their caps are seldom recycled and are an easily recognised source of ocean plastic. As a result of this situation the EU passed legisla- tion requiring that by July 2024 that all caps on beverage packaging remain attached or tethered after the bottle or carton is opened. Similar legislation was under discussion in California but has not yet been approved. The discussions about tethered caps have brought the technology to centre stage in cap production. We spoke to CEO Beat Rupp and Ueli Kobel about the background. PETplanet: Mr Rupp, Mr Kobel, you provide customers with systems for slitting caps. To what extent have requirements changed with the teth- ered cap? PackSys: Up to now, we have basically been dealing with straight cuts around the cap perimeter. This means we have rolled the cap along a knife with a speci fi ed pressure. This created the predetermined breaking points that enables the consumer to release the cap from the quality band using a speci fi c twisting motion. PETplanet: The plastic cap must remain attached to the bottle during consumption. PackSys: Exactly. This happens only with an integrated hinge between the tamper evident band and cap and it makes the cutting geometry signi fi - cantly more complex. The knife along which we rolled the cap must now not only cut horizontally; there are also vertical cutting edges on the knife. We call this technology smarTether. PETplanet: The design of the hinge, i.e. where the cut should be, is decided by the customer? PackSys: Yes. We deliberately stay out of this area. Each customer has their own trends there and that’s how it should stay. Certainly, we discuss ideas with the customer, as despite clev- erly crafted hinge solutions, these can sometimes be dif fi cult to implement in production. One very interesting area is the use of tethered caps on cartons, especially those known as gable top. Gable top cartons, which are very often used for dairy products, have an angled top instead of a fl at top. For such cases the beverage is always dispensed in a cer- tain way. Tethered caps on water, juice or carbonated soft drink bottles can be tethered in any direction. For gable top packages the tethered cap has to be oriented so that it stays out of the path of the beverage being poured. Develop- ing orientation technology for tethered caps has been an interesting challenge but one where we have succeeded. The fi rst oriented systems using our newly developed CapCompass technol- ogy are now in production and should deliver oriented tethered caps to the market in 2021. PETplanet: If you put the different designs from customers side by side, can you identify a trend? PackSys: A very clear trend is that the projects work with existing caps. They are trying to continue to produce the cap in the same way as usual and make the necessary adjustments just with the slitting. There is a strong pressure from all segments to make tethered caps be as cost effective as possible and certainly to avoid using more plastic for a tethered cap than for a non-tethered cap. PETplanet: Are there projects that have come through the prototype stage? PackSys: One customer has pro- duced and tested 80 million screw caps and is now expanding its testing to sev- eral more locations. A lot of expertise has been developed by the cap makers, the bottlers and us as well. PETplanet: So there will be a sig- ni fi cant sales increase for your business when the new regulations are imple- mented. Ueli Kobel, Group Leader Global Sales Closures PackSys Global