Who pays for the future?

2004 Chinese beverage market scale up to 24.49 million t, especially tea, fruit juice and functional drinks fast growth continues to bring opportunities for hot filling PET bottle, if with 60% of the PET packing uptake and 1000 ml PET bottle measure, at least more than tens of billions of PET bottle needs.

Beer, however, is a problem of technology and consumer psychology. In addition to preservation, sterilization and other issues, whether consumers can accept plastic bottles of beer is also a question to be verified. It is expected that in 2005 there will be 3.5% of PET bottles. Obviously, this is a risky attempt relative to 0.1% in 2002.

PET bottle blowing technology.

"China's packaging machinery and pet bottles are considered by the Chinese packaging bottle net to be made in China, which is far behind the development of beverage," he said. In the field of bottle blowing, China's current development mainly consists of two steps, because the two-step method is relatively efficient. From the blow bottle, the foreign countries have reached more than 50,000 bottles per hour, or even more than 70,000 bottles, just 25,000 bottles in our country.

Western music (Sidel) our Asia Pacific President Zhang Zhong, argues Mr One-step markets around the world is falling, two steps is growing, the main reason there are two: the first is that now the bottle embryo can buy everywhere, bottle embryo commercialization is very common; One-step growth at that time is a factor, is the customer in many places there is no way to find the right bottle embryo, but now due to the large number of production bottle embryo, customers can easily get bottle embryo without their production. Second, the two-step method has advantages over one step in both cost and quality. In the bottle market, the cost of the bottle is extremely sensitive, and two crucial factors determine the return on investment: the production capacity of the machine and the output of each bottle. The concept of "dual-mode cavity" introduced by siderle (double mold cavity on the same mold), blowing two bottles simultaneously on the same station, is very suitable for large-scale production of small containers. The production rate of SB020 dual-cavity equipment in siderle can reach 60,000 bottles /h.

Mr OlafWeiland, managing director of SIGCorpoplast, believes that "every manufacturer in the future will produce the containers they need in their own factories". Obviously from the economic benefit, transporting empty bottles to the bottling plant will increase the cost. Now the production of beverage industry is from blowing bottles, filling to packaging, improving the efficiency of the whole line. The two-step method has the characteristics of light weight, simple operation and flexible production. It can directly use the bottle embryo without considering many problems such as PET raw material, and concentrate on the finished product filling. Mr. Chen juntim, the director of China, introduced the bottle blowing machine of SIGCorpoplast, which has a short time to replace the mould. The output of each mold cavity can reach 1630 bottles per hour, and the speed is very fast.

The continuformh40 stretch blow molding machine of Krones can be used for the production of thermoforming bottles and standard bottles. The output of 500ml bottles is 44000 bottles /h, which is suitable for hot filling PET bottle blowing bottles.

The green leaves are to the root.

Cap is a detail that is often overlooked by consumers, but it is a big problem for manufacturers. Italy Mr Li keping jie who has many years of research on cap and bottle cap mould, "the production of plastic bottle cap looks very simple, but plastic bottle cap mould manufacturing there is a high professional technology". The company is famous for the design and manufacture of injection molds with multi-cavity, high precision and hot runner. In 2000, the company developed 64 cavity rapid mold cap mold, and realized 3s on the rapid injection molding machine of Nestal, which created the world record of the opening and closing cycle of the bottle cap mold with 64 cavities.

"Many plastic bottle cap manufacturers in Europe are looking for ways to reduce the weight of bottle caps and increase productivity in order to reduce costs and increase market share, while ensuring the physical function of the bottle caps." The company developed the MIVA series bottle cap in response to market demand. MIWAL3P, for example, 28 mm, only 1.5 ~ 1.6 g, 1 g lighter than the traditional PET plastic bottle cap, the cap as long as 90 ° rotating can open, open low torque, suitable for all ages. At present, there are 7 sets of this kind of 64 - cavity bottle cap moulds used by the wahaha group. The company has also developed a patented technology for non-rotating dual-material injection moulds, which are used for disposable packing caps. This invention greatly saves the investment in the production equipment with the bottle cap. With cushion cap of traditional production is made by injection cap equipment, injection equipment and assembly equipment or plastic pad, with jie feit company double injection mold, can be in the original note on adding a injection unit can be easily realized with the production of cushion cap.

SACMI SACMI's clamping bottle cap is another technology that is different from the traditional injection bottle cap, the first mechanical manufacturer to push the press into the market. The salami rotary hydraulic press makes the mould simple, so the investment cost of compression molding is much less than the cost of injection molding. Because of his complete design and manufacture of plastic cover mold, he has a large overall advantage. According to sakmi, the clamping bottle cap fits well with the round bottle cap. In July, Mr Sakmi showed 600 /min at ProPak, but their fastest product was 1,200 /min, and seven of them have already been sold.

The injection molding and pressing bottle caps represent two different processes. The former can buy various molds and make flexible design, which can design relatively complex LIDS, but the mold cost is higher. Pressing the bottle cap is relatively cheap.

Bericap is a German family-owned company that specializes in bottle caps, with 18 companies and sales of 310 million euros in 2003. Kunshan company in China was founded in 1998, and in China it mainly provides the bottle caps of 30/25 and PCO28 bottles, 38mm, 48mm and five gallons of tampercy bottle caps. And functional bottle caps (such as the cover of bottled water). It has produced about 900 million 30mm caps for China's "non-carbonated water" industry. The current launch of the "bailiff service pack" is a new form of packaging with users, which is far beyond the design of the standard bottle cap. In the field of 38mm hot filling, sk38/16doubleseal heat filling bottle cap becomes the ideal solution for high efficiency filling of large equipment.

Taiwan hin all belong to the master kong group company, is also a food and beverage packaging bottle caps, bottle embryo, its innovative KingCan cap for filling all kinds of reusable or recycling cosmetic packaging such as glass bottles, plastic bottles, paper box, and metal containers provide cap and can also provide a variety of bottle cap with gasket or gasket; The color can be varied, provide monochrome to 4 color top printing or relief, for brand promotion; At the same time, the design and manufacture of the plug - type sealing cover for the PET bottle mouth.

Challenge the ubiquitous air.

PET bottle has good transparency, chemical stability, better blocking performance, light weight and low price, and recyclable, etc, but there are three kinds of PET bottle packing barrier property: one is sensitive to O2 juices and dairy products as well as the small bottle of carbonated drinks; Second, products containing CO2; The third is a product that is sensitive to O2 and contains CO2, such as beer. As a beer bottle, the barrier sex of the PET bottle is severely tested. Beer packaging is the most demanding of all beverages. That's why less than 0.1% of the world's 250 billion beer containers were used in 2002.

The first is the compressive strength, which can prevent the leakage of CO2 under high pressure and the infiltration of the outside O2. The second is the heat resistance, the ability to withstand the pasteurization of the high temperature; The third is the impact resistance. Improving the barrier function of PET bottles is the main direction of the major companies, which involves the modification of raw materials, equipment, processing technology and PET.

At present, the barrier technology is mainly manifested in several aspects: the first is the surface coating method, such as the west music company Actis technology, adopting amorphous carbon coating, than ordinary PET bottle of oxygen by 30 times, 78% of the cost is only 78% of the glass bottles, metal cans, has obvious advantage in recycling. Its Actis20 plasma coating machine can process 10,000 0.6l PET bottles per hour. In 2001, siderle promoted Actis coating technology in China, but the popularity of PET bottles in China and around the world was clearly overestimated. But today it is different. The young people born in the late 1970s are almost all grown up with, holding and carrying PET bottles. The Actis - coated PET bottle has gained a high acceptance rate among customers and consumer goods in the highly selective German beer market. West PaulHolderith much group executive vice President, says Mr Promotion opportunity has come, in China but forever will look for partners to promote together, there are a lot of innovation in the vanguard of China's beverage industry enterprise, so a win-win space is very large. Mr ArneAndersen, manager of the Plasmax coating equipment at SIGCorpoplast, told reporters that plasma-coated devices use "plasma-inspired chemicals gasification and sedimentation" (PIVCD) to produce PET filling bottles. The plasma technology USES a mixture of two gases to ignite a chemical reaction on the inner wall of the PET bottle. The coating is completely transparent and will not change the color of the original PET bottle. The coating can be cleaned with chemical agent and completely recovered. Since the coating is inorganic, it will not react with the product, thus ensuring safety. According to Andersen, coating PET bottles cost about 100 yuan more per 1,000 bottles than uncoated ones. But if you choose the coating, you can reduce the thickness of the wall of the PET bottle, reduce the weight of the bottle, and reduce the cost of the bottle. Plasmax12D coating bottles and systems, all sizes (0.4 ~ 1L) of PET bottles with a coating speed of 10,000 bottles /h.

The technology of vacuum plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition is strongly supported by Japanese companies. This diamond-type carbon processing technology, DLC, is mainly developed by Japan Japan seibi ASB, Japan kirin beer, mitsubishi commercial and other companies. The film's DLC film has more than 20 times more barrier properties than ordinary PET bottles and seven times more CO2. The transparency is very high, the coating is soft, not easy to crack, strong acid and alkali resistance. Corresponding production equipment is being developed and promoted to the Chinese market.

While the barrier property silica gel coating by the Coca-Cola company to cooperate with companies such as Germany KRONES KRONES has developed "improve the barrier property of PET bottle" silicon processing, the process cost is more economic than using PEN bottle or multi-layer coating bottle. But the coating could make the outer layers of the PET bottle fill with pinholes. Swiss tetra TetraPak company also developed plasma coated SiO2 technology in PET bottle, formed on the inner wall of the bottle, thickness of 0.1 ~ 0.1 mm on vitreous barrier coating, use the canned beer bottle, shelf life can be extended to 4 ~ 12 months. 18000 bottles of beer can be handled every hour.

Other coating technologies, such as Italy's SIPA SIPA company, which USES epoxy-amine blocking coatings from PPG company in the United States, produced PET bottles with epoxy-amine coating, forming a bright and resistant barrier layer. Lile USES thermoplastic ring resin of DOW chemical company to adjust the thickness of the barrier layer with two bottles. DuPont, the us company, is also developing a two-stage coating technology that can increase the barrier between O2 and CO2 to more than 30 times.

In addition to the spray barrier technology, the mixed material modification method is equipped with multi-layer co-extrusion technology, and the market develops rapidly. Add other substances, such as PEN, LCP and MAX6, to the PET bottle to form new plastic packaging materials. This method has the material blend modification, copolymerization modification, multilayer composite modification and nano-grade PET plastic (NPET). The innovative zhuhai zhongfu industrial group is the leading company in domestic PET bottle production, and is the earliest manufacturer of PET bottles approved by coke. They adopt multi-layer composite modification, and the PET bottle made by the multi-layer co-injection process provided by Kortec company can withstand the high temperature of 67, and the shelf life of beer can reach 6 months. Canada's HUSKY company provides a method for producing multilayer bottles of barrier bottles. The barrier layer of the gas is made by the method of co-extrusion blow molding and final embryo separation.

The barrier coatings, such as the BestPET of kronos, can process single-layer PET bottles with a capacity of 20,000 bottles /h, and industrialize applications in beer, fruit juice, tea drinks, soda and perfume containers.

Filling compete

In 2001, the market revolution began with the unified "fresh orange" hot filling PET bottle juice drink. And huiyuan to retake's leadership in the fruit juice market, the introduction of PET aseptic cold filling line, annual processing capacity of more than 1 million t, reversing a decline, in which "he" + her with good marketing, 4 months sales went into the front.

PET bottle aseptic cold filling technology, can reduce the gram weight and reduce the cost of PET bottles, but asepsis PET equipment investment cost is very high, the cost of a line in more than 1000 euros, and workshops for the high requirement of environmental health. There are about 200 domestic filling and processing machinery, with less than 30 complete machines and complete sets of production capacity. The highest in China is only 36,000 bottles /h, while foreign countries have reached over 70,000 bottles /h. At home, it mainly focuses on hot filling and filling lines. Only limited manufacturers such as lehui can provide the technology of cold filling. When the price of PET particles is flat, and the mold design and equipment technology of the heat-resistant PET bottle can be further reduced, the advantages of aseptic filling empty bottle can be gradually eliminated. The real test, says Mr Mei of sidelia, is from milk tea drinks, such as milk tea and coffee milk, which must be filled with sterile PET bottles.

As the mature beer market declines, the key to getting out of the slump is to promote product quality and breakthrough packaging. SIG - Simonazzi development new beer sterilizing process to achieve the stability of the long-term preservation PET bottled beer quality, the enhancement of cold sterilization EPT, pressure is at high speeds (according to the pressure gradient) to have filled plastic bottled beer is brewed with high pressure water and half adiabatic rapid sterilization combination of heat treatment. This EPT process is characterized by a direct application to products and packaging materials (bottles and LIDS) for the products that have already been filled, thus eliminating secondary pollution in the filling process.

Chi zongbo of guangzhou yuehui co., LTD. Thinks that it can draw on the advantages of foreign cold filling and develop a sterile cold filling line suitable for China. Such as disinfection machine adopts the model of Krones Krones, poor air quality in our country, the bottle blow molding, conveying process is easy to produce secondary pollution, Krones model can effective disinfection sterilization for the bottle inside and outside the wall; The bottle machine should adopt the three-way mode of KHS company, which makes the adjustment convenient. If disinfectant is not sterilized thoroughly, it can be added a disinfectant to sterilize the bottle. In the structure of filling valve PROCOMAC mode choice, because the domestic currently in rubber sealing material gap bigger, krones and KHS company electromagnetic diaphragm valve for high requirement of diaphragm seals, and mature sterile canned aseptic PROCOMAC chooses valve group, simple structure, and adopt the plug-in, the sealing filling in order to reduce the moving parts, effectively reduce the operation and maintenance; The clean room adopts the design of Procomac company, which requires low operating environment through the isolation suit. LeHui aseptic cold filling line in Beijing huiyuan has been running, can be suitable for 350 ~ 2500 ml PET bottled high acid, low acid and neutral fruit and vegetable drinks, juice, tea and keep the taste of the drink, fresh degree good, reduce packaging material cost 1/2 ~ 1/3. Since the bottle does not have to be subjected to high temperatures, it is free to design the bottle without worrying about the heat distortion of the bottle (which is important for marketing considerations).

But cold or hot filling line is not decided to market the key factors, such as subordinates ting hsin group of whole fruit juice, despite the hot filling process, but the cold chain is adopted to improve the storage, transportation, etc., its taste is very good, still in the east China market sales have been good. Therefore, content is the most critical factor to win consumers.

Labeling technology

In the filling line, the technical content of the labeling machine is relatively high, and the domestic market is still in the position of foreign brand monopoly. At present, only guangdong pinghang machinery factory can keep up with the development of the market. From a marketing standpoint, SIGAlfa alfa's manager Liang Tong, argues Mr Labeling machine hand in running speed and the speed of filling machine flat under the premise of the flexibility to adapt to customer demand, on the other hand is to reduce the cost. In terms of technology, Mr. Robert, who is in the leading position in the country, thinks that the direction of the labeling machine is the component labeling machine, and the same machine can meet several different labeling modes. Ms feng jianxin, its manager in China, noted that kronse's new direct casing, SleevematicDS and SleevematicDSInline, had been introduced last year, and that there was no vacuum to reduce cleaning.

Sacmi labeling machine Opera performance is very outstanding, the rolling labeling machine can continuous to 60000 bottles/h work effectively, can empty bottle and bottle labeling, can even for less than 13 g light bottle labeling; At the same time, they are also suitable for the latest label materials (18mm OPP or PET), which are not different from other materials. Previous labeling machine is the biggest problem is that the efficiency of the bottling line problem, users tend to arrange 2 or 3 labeling machine work in parallel, especially in the process of rolling labeling, often have LiangSanTai machine. It is obviously a waste of money when a linear machine works on the same assembly line. And the rolling labeling machine has a good guarantee in efficiency and speed, and it is suitable for contraction label. At the moment, sakmi is working on the sticker and sticker on the non-straight wall to achieve high speed technology.

Recycling technologies

PET bottle recycling method, in addition to the physical methods and chemical recycling is becoming more and more attention, one of Australia's Petrecyclepty penew patent technology is in application, the device can handle 100 kt PET bottle. This process is to deal with color or have a coating of PET bottle waste, the process is to PET bottles by ethylene glycol steam steamed 1 h, embrittlement, then grind to 1 mm size of particles, impurities, low alcoholysis of polymers, including some terephthalic acid monomer; After special filtration process to remove pigment additives or coating sundries, the final product is mixed with fresh monomer and esterified to make a colorless PET bottle.

Looking forward to brilliant

The plastic packaging market has grown rapidly in recent years, with the average annual output increasing by more than 11%. As SIG beverage machinery company President Mr James Chen thinks, although PET packing cost problem remains unresolved, but the shape is rich, improved technology can increase the freshness, easy transportation, conservation and recycling, the future in China.