Husky Injection Molding Systems today announced that at Drinktec 2009, it will be demonstrating the world’s first system specifically optimized for manufacturing preforms with high percentages of food-grade recycled PET flake. On display at the Husky booth (Hall B3, Booth 326), the new system will help to make PET packaging more sustainable by enabling significant increases to the amount of post-consumer, recycled PET flake.
“Husky recognizes the importance of sustainability in PET packaging, which is why we have invested in putting post-consumer material back into the bottle,” said John Galt, Husky’s President and CEO. “Recycled flake used to be challenging to work with. Husky saw this as an opportunity to take a leadership role to simplify the manufacturing process and reduce the overall cost and environmental footprint of PET packaging. The recycling solution we will introduce at Drinktec is an important first step for us in building a portfolio of solutions aimed at improving the sustainability of packaging.”
At Drinktec, Husky will be displaying a 72-cavity HyPET® Recycled Flake (RF) 300 system with High Performance Package (HPP) running a blend of 50% virgin and 50% post-consumer PET flake. The system is producing a 34.7 gram EcoBase™ preform at the same 10.5 second cycle that would be expected running 100% virgin PET. Enabling 2.5% additional resin savings, the EcoBase preform design was first introduced at NPE 2009.
“We appreciate that Husky is taking the initiative to make PET a more sustainable packaging option. This new development will help make it easier to incorporate more recycled PET into the bottles we make and allow us to reduce our overall carbon footprint,” said Dave Clark, Amcor's Director, Sustainability.
This new HyPET option addresses the specific challenges of manufacturing PET bottles using recycled PET flake. System enhancements include in-line melt filtration to eliminate black specks and other contaminants that might otherwise affect bottle quality, as well as a new extruder design for improved processing of pellet and flake blends. These features will allow manufacturers not currently using recycled PET flake to introduce this material into their products. For those already using recycled PET flake, this can eliminate some of the current manufacturing and quality challenges they may face while enabling an increase in their flake content.
The recycled PET has been supplied by Cleanaway of Rostock, Germany. All of the bottles produced at the show will be returned to Cleanaway for recycling. To demonstrate the bottle quality capability, the preforms will be blown on the Sidel booth (Hall A6, Booth 326) to produce 1.5 liter carbonated soft drink bottles. Husky will also show its new HyCAP™ system, which will be manufacturing a lightweight 1881 closure to fit the bottle.
Drinktec 2009 system details:
- Machine: HyPET RF 300 with HPP (Flake Processing Enhancements)
- Mold: 72-cavity mold
- Part weight: 34.7 gram EcoBase preform
- Application: 1.5 liter carbonated soft drink bottle
- Resin: Cleanaway PET Flakes, La Seda Virgin PET
- Cycle time: 10.5 second cycle
- Auxiliaries: Intravis orientation and vision inspection system, Piovan process auxiliaries, Starve feeder, ColorMatrix Colourant
