CAPS & CLOSURES 21 PETplanet Insider Vol. 25 No. 07+08/24 www.petpla.net A blessing and a curse at the same time? The tethered cap story… Tethered caps have kept the closure and beverage industry extremely busy in recent years. Now the time has come, the EU directive is in force. Companies in the EU countries are making the change - because they have to. What are the advantages of tethered caps, what is the status of implementation? And the big question is what will happen to this type of closure outside the EU - will there be other markets? As part of the AMI’s Plastic Closure Innovation Conference in Barcelona, which took place on June 4 to 6, 2024, PETplanet spoke to Luca Nanetti, CCO at Wisecap and Stefano Chiozzini, Closures B.U. Manager at Sacmi. PETplanet: Mr Nanetti, from your perspective as a cap producer, what are three big advantages of the tethered cap solution? Mr Nanetti: Frankly, I would challenge any cap producer to come up with anything positive about tethered caps!!! The level of investments involved in this has been enormous and we are only at the beginning. But at the end of the day converters are also consumers and are themselves actively involved in the fate of our plastic beverage industry. For this reason, need coincides with opportunity to bring advantages to the industry. The three main advantages that I see are consumers becoming aware that their support is necessary to reduce littering and thereby enhance circularity. Recycling technologies have been evolving at unprecedented speed in recent years and being able to have an increasing amount of recycled plastic material (PET and now also PE used for the cap attached to the bottle) will create more opportunities to reduce crude oil consumption and make bottle-to-bottle and capto-cap more of a reality every day. Finally, the introduction of tethered caps offers an unheard-of opportunity to bring further technical innovations to the cap industry. PETplanet: Mr Chiozzini, what were the major challenges in developing the machine technology for the tethered closure? Mr Chiozzini: Let me start by replacing the word “challenges” to “opportunities”. In fact, machine technology development has certainly been a long process with many surprises on the way but it drove us to develop a new generation of machines, moulds and vision systems that nowadays enriches our range of turn-key solutions. The “tethered caps adventure” also introduced a new way of designing closures not only oriented to sealing performances but also to opening functionalities with the goal of maximising and improving the consumer experience and this has been very exciting. However, a lot of work has gone into improving the efficiency of the scoring process relating to the new way of cutting the plastic of the tamper evidence band of the tethered caps. Finally, the impact on the industry, prompted by the European SUP directive, gave producers a limited time to make the changes. Manufacturers were forced to invest heavily in the production process to reduce unnecessary delays to our lead times. This has definitely been an additional topic worthy of consideration with the final goal of avoiding delays that might have damaged the confidence and the business of our customers. PETplanet: Mr Nanetti, you offer a wide range of tethered closures. Have you identified closures that are in particularly high demand and the applications for which they are used? Mr Nanetti: In general, and in order to properly respond to national laws imposing the use of tethered closures, all families are to be delivered with a tethered cap. Thus the demand for tethered closures is spread across all the bottle families which fall within the terms of the new regulations. Additionally, and for different reasons, the first part of 2024 is showing a high level of demand in terms of volumes. PETplanet: Mr Chiozzini, what do customers have to do if they want to expand their existing Sacmi cap machine with the tethered cap solution? Can the new technology be integrated into every Sacmi cap system? Mr Chiozzini: That’s a very interesting question that helps me to share Stefano Chiozzini, Closures BU Manager at Sacmi Luca Nanetti, CCO at Wisecap
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