PETpla.net Insider 04 / 2021

MATERIALS / RECYCLING PETplanet Insider Vol. 22 No. 04/21 www.petpla.net 14 Taking a holistic approach to PET packaging with AWArPET Sipa’s philosophy for PET containers is a holistic one – it looks at the big picture of how low-weight, high-performance, aesthetically pleasing, consumer-friendly PET packaging fi ts best into the new circular economy. Sipa is well known among the globe as a supplier of equipment systems for producing (and fi lling) PET preforms and large and small containers. This offering is backed up by a comprehensive design service that helps customers take early ideas about containers all the way through drawings, virtual and real prototypes – functional as well as decorative – testing and validation, through to the de fi nite article. “We are strongly focused on optimising the use of PET in liquid packaging,” says Sipa’s Packaging Development Manager. “We iden- tify and implement the proper light- weight solution, based on customer and market demands, transport and handling logistics, local scenarios, and other in fl uencing factors. Second- ary packaging may also play a part. It almost goes without saying that Sipa is a strong advocate of the use of post-consumer recycled materials.” Design, engineering, and production with 100% rPET PET bottles containing post- consumer recycled material – rPET – have in a relatively short time become a common sight, rather than the exception that they were just a few years ago; use of rPET is des- tined to increase further, with a grow- ing number of bottles made in 100% rPET. Sipa has built up experience through its expertise in bottle design and in process technologies to enable the use of rPET. This means not only creating designs that take into account differences and varia- tions in processing characteristics of rPET, but also other less obvious factors such as the increased level of powder that rPET processing cre- ates. Containers incorporating rPET will only be accepted by brand owners and consumers if they perform as well as containers made from virgin mate- rial. That means rPET arriving at the converter has to be clean and consist- ent, and with processability during preform production and bottle blowing that is almost, if not exactly, the same as virgin PET. A new brand - AWArPET Sipa states that sustainability has for many years been at the heart of its thinking, about everything it does, whether it is the way its equipment is built and works, or how its customers containers are produced, fi lled, used, disposed of, and, increasingly, recov- ered and converted back into contain- ers again. These days, Sipa’s product design experts are involved in the develop- ment of 3,000 or more new packag- ing designs every year. The three R: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – are constant principles in all of these projects, says the company. That’s why Sipa has now established a new brand -AWArPET- which stands for an environmentally conscious approach to the design and production of PET packaging. Recyclass rules Sipa strictly follows the Recy- class Design for Recycling guidelines established by EPBP, the European PET Bottle Platform. This voluntary industry initiative provides PET bottle design guidelines for recycling, evalu- ates PET bottle packaging solutions and technologies, and facilitates understanding of the effects of new PET bottle innovations on recycling processes. EPBP is supported by the Euro- pean Federation of Bottled Waters (EFBW), the European Association of Plastic Recycling and Recov- ery Organisations (EPRO), Petcore Europe, Plastics Recyclers Europe (PRE) and European Soft Drinks Industry (Unesda). It has established several test procedures in order to assess the impact on recycling of new packaging technologies. Products that pass the tests should not cause any problems during recycling. The Green Plastic Factor AWArPET bottles are very light. Sipa has for example been involved in one design project, code-named Mario, for a 1 l water bottle weigh- ing just 16 g, far lighter than most 1 l bottles currently on the market. The company believes that over the next three-to- fi ve years, the weight could come down even more.