PETpla.net Insider 04 / 2021

PREFORM PRODUCTION PETplanet Insider Vol. 22 No. 04/21 www.petpla.net 19 Overall, co-injection is the better solution to achieve sustainability goals, plus it brings savings in costs and fl ex- ibility to run small scale production. PETplanet: While observing the market where do you see market trends? Igor: The main market trend in the packaging and of course in the PET industry can be summarised in one word: sustainability. Everybody wants to have a sustainable solu- tion, but without any cost increase, nor capital investment. Another trend is e-commerce, demanding that the packaging has to be lighter but also stronger because of handling. The shelf life is also a very important topic, even now during the pandemic where products needs to be shipped world- wide. This means that the packaging has to increase barrier properties. A third trend I would like to mention is the time of product changes. Brand owner and packaging companies are bringing many different shapes in the market, this means a new kind of equipment is required. Small scales are produced to test, this means addi- tion capital investment. The return of this has to come as fast as possible. This is where Mold-Masters has the right solution to the industry: Co-injec- tion Connect delivers a wide process window to mould bio-resins, challeng- ing engineering resins and high con- tent of PCR. On the cost side, we are offering dedicated solutions based on two criteria: How to reduce investment and to ensure that the running costs are as low as possible. www.moldmasters.com www.milacron.com PETplanet Insider talked with Rus- sell Gray, Chief Operations Of fi cer at NGOC Nghia Industry , Vietnam, about his Mold-Masters equipment: PETplanet: How long has Mold- Masters been a customer of NNI? And why do NNI decide to work with them? Ngoc Nghia Industry - Service - Trading Joint Stock Company (NN) is a leading PET converter in Vietnam, specialising in bottle blow-moulding, injection moulding, and cap compression moulding. Founded in 1993, NN is a leading company in PET manufacturing with modern PET packaging production lines in Vietnam. NN have achieved a commanding position within the Vietnam market, one out of every three PET bottles in the market is produced by NN. The suc- cess harvested from their core business which has allowed NN to diversify to the manufacturing of plastic closures, with a speci fi c focus on compression cap moulding. NN’s standards are backed by the certi fi cation of FSSC 22000 Certi fi cation, HACCP Certi fi ed, BRC Food Certi fi ed inclusive of Cosmetics and Packaging, Halal Certi fi ed; therefore, more than 1,000 companies from various industries have trusted and chosen NN as their strategic packaging partner. Russell: After I joined NNI in May of 2018, we started discussions on this project with Mold-Masters in Q4 of 2018. NNI had made a strategic decision to invest in new technologies to meet the demanding and evolving requirements of the rigid packaging industry and provide advantaged technical and cost effective solutions to our customers. I was aware of the Mold-Masters Connect solution, knew that this could be applied and developed for preforms and would be a perfect entry level solution to adapt to our existing preform systems for multi- layer preforms. PETplanet: What technologies do you use at NNi and for what kind of application are they used? What are the advantages of using Mold-Masters technologies? Russell: NNI has a signi fi cant number of Husky and Niigon preform systems, Sacmi systems for closures, Sidel, Blomax, Sipa and Techlong blowers as well as ASB single stage machines for bottles. We have moulds and hot runners from Husky, Stackteck/ Yudo and GDXL for our preform busi- ness; Mold-Masters offered a solution that was not available from our existing partners including a well established hot runner solution for co-injection pre- forms. The E-Multi unit had a similarly proven track record in the market so we felt comfortable choosing Mold-Masters as a partner. PETplanet: Are you satis fi ed with the machines and the service from Mold-Masters (MM)? Russell: The overall project from concept to the system integration and acceptance in Canada and fi nal start-up and acceptance in Vietnam has been a great experience. MM drew on people from across their company to ensure the project was a success. The real challenge came with the installation and start-up in Vietnam in a year with Covid. MM worked with our technical team to provide remote start-up support includ- ing detailed instructions on installation and start-up as well as on-line support. Our team was able to successfully install and operate the Mold-Masters Connect having never seen the equip- ment and without training. Installation to preform acceptance was completed in less than 2 weeks and our team was very impressed with how user friendly the interface and controls were to use and the robust construction of the hard- ware. Their team also worked closely with our QA team on the detailed inspection process for co-injection pre- forms including validation of our results with samples sent to their own QA Lab in NA. PETplanet: Are there plans for future cooperation? Russell: We continue to work with MM on a number of applications for our co-injection preforms and they are always more than willing to engage and provide support on this. As the demand for co-injection preforms increases we are con fi dent that MM can provide scalable higher cavitation systems for our existing machines. www.nnc.vn Niigon 150NPET with a 32 cavity co- injection hot runner and E-Multi from Mold-Masters.