Husky is committed to helping beverage packaging manufacturers be more sustainable

Husky Injection Molding Systems today announced its ongoing commitment to helping customers run more sustainable operations. To help support this goal, Husky is dedicated to investing in the development of innovative new technologies and services. “As the beverage packaging market continues to evolve, manufacturers are paying more attention to becoming more sustainable,” said Volker Neuber, Husky’s Vice President, Service and Sales, Europe, Middle East and Africa. “Husky is committed to providing our customers with solutions that not only increase productivity, but also reduce their carbon footprint.” Quantifying the sustainability of beverage packaging Husky is examining the complete life cycle of beverage packaging, including bottle and closure, to determine ways to improve the manufacturing process to make it more sustainable. Husky is working with the Allied Development Corporation, a third party consulting and publications company, to conduct Life Cycle Analysis studies. The studies show how the environmental footprint and greenhouse gas emissions of manufacturing and transporting PET bottles relates to alternative forms of packaging. “Husky is taking steps to support research to learn about the environmental footprint of beverage packaging,” said Jeff MacDonald, Husky’s Vice President of Marketing. “Our goal is to apply this knowledge to product development that will help to improve sustainability. For example, making it easier for manufacturers to use greater amounts of recycled PET.” The first study found that in North America, PET is the most favorable alternative when compared to aluminum cans and glass bottles for a 355 ml carbonated soft drink application. When measuring greenhouse gas emissions, PET containers had the lowest output at 314.9 pounds per 1,000 units, approximately 250 pounds less than aluminum and 180 pounds less than glass. In terms of energy consumption, PET also performed the best with 3,225 MJ per 1,000 units, in comparison to aluminum at 3,917 MJ and glass at 4,227 MJ. Reducing the carbon footprint of plastic PET bottles In an effort to increase the content of recycled flake in beverage packaging, Husky has developed the HyPET® Recycled Flake (RF) system, which is specifically optimized for manufacturing preforms with high percentages of food-grade recycled flake. The system will help to make PET packaging more sustainable by enabling the use of up to 50% post-consumer, recycled PET flake. The HyPET RF system will be demonstrated for the first time at Drinktec 2009 in Munich (Sept. 14 – 19, 2009). At NPE 2009, Husky launched the EcoBase™ preform, the first initiative of its kind, which offers all customers a standardized lightweighting solution that yields additional reductions in resin use by focusing on the preform design. This is an example of how Husky is exploring opportunities for additional gains in productivity and resin savings by improving how systems and applications work together. One-piece, lightweight closures Husky recently launched its HyCAP™ system, which is specifically optimized for high speed beverage closure manufacturing. The HyCAP system is ideally suited to produce the lightweight, one-piece closures that are becoming increasingly common in beverage packaging. At Drinktec 2009, Husky is manufacturing a new PCO 1881 closure weighing 2.3 grams, which is a significant improvement from the previous industry standard of 2.8 to 3.0 grams. In comparison to alternate processes, injection molded one-piece closures typically require less resin, making them more sustainable and cost-effective to manufacture. Helping customers operate more energy efficiently Being proactive in minimizing unplanned downtime and conserving resources are goals that Husky recognizes as becoming increasingly important in today’s economic climate. Husky’s Manufacturing Advisory Services team helps customers achieve maximum operating efficiency by streamlining processes and lowering energy consumption. For example, Husky recently helped a leading manufacturer identify opportunities to streamline operations that resulted in a total energy cost savings of 17% in just over one year.