ONsite 46 PETplanet Insider Vol. 24 No. 04/23 www.petpla.net Ho.Bag and Sipa: Cooperation on cosmetic and personal care containers Just down the road from Sipa’s headquarters in Vittorio Veneto, the company Ho.Bag Corporate has an increasing activity in bottle making. A few years ago, Ho.Bag, which started life as a seller of accessories, mostly for cosmetics and personal care, extended into in-house production. It started in 2019 with an investment in extrusion-blow moulding of polyolefin bottles, and this was followed last year by a move into production of small PET bottles. Ho.Bag has acquired two ECS SP 25 single-stage injectionstretch-blow moulding systems, including numerous moulds made by Sipa. Ho.Bag is using these machines to supply customers with a notable range of container sizes, shapes and colours, in small and very small lots – down to as low as 10,000 bottles per order. Sipa’s ECS SP units are claimed to be robust, versatile, and energy efficient, thanks in part to hybrid drive technology that uses servo-electrics to provide speed and precision in injection, with hydraulics performing more “workhorse” tasks. “They have the shortest lock-to-lock time on the market, mould changeover can be performed quickly and simply, and the same hot runner system can used on different cold halves”, says Sipa. Ho.Bag is processing both post-consumer rPET as well as virgin polymer, on the Sipa ECS machines – and among its colour offering is an attractive black PET bottle that can be detected by near-infrared (NIR) detectors. Traditional carbon black pigments are invisible to NIR, so Ho.Bag uses a PET that contains an alternative pigment that reflects NIR, so automatic sorting machines in mixed waste recycling operations can see them and put them into the right stream. (See also PETplanet 1+2/2023, page 36) Sipa and Ho.Bag are now cooperating on an increasing number of containers. Normally, Ho.Bag takes care of product development in-house, but it can turn to Sipa for such services as prototyping and testing. www.sipasolutions.com The right tools and expertise to help with your rPET goals! Agr is uniquely positioned to support your venture into rPET bottle manufacturing with a powerful combination of Process Control tools, Process Consultants, and decades of industry experience. AGRINTL.COM • +1.724.482.2163
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