Plastics News - Show Daily - October 19, 2022 - 8

8 * Plastics News, October 19, 2022
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Contiform stretch blow molding
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By David Vink
Plastics News Correspondent
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During the opening ceremony
for the September 2022 Drinktec
beverage fair in Munich, Volker
Kronseder, chairman of the Drinktec
fair advisory council and supervisory
council chairman at
Neutraubling, Germany-based beverage
machinery producer Krones
AG, spoke about the status of the
beverage machinery market.
Kronseder referred to 600 companies
involved in production of
food processing and packaging machines
having increased turnover
by 7 percent in 2021
to €14.8 billion, just
under the pre-COVID
€15 billion record.
These statistics did
not separate out PET
stretch blow molding
machines or conveyor
systems, but Kronseder
estimated they had accounted
for €6 billion to the 2021 total.
The sector continued to show
resilience, continually growing,
irrespective of various crises, Kronseder
observed. Turnover growth
for 2022 is expected to be lower
than in 2021 due to supply chain
diffi culties postponing deliveries
and hence also turnover into 2023.
Kronseder referred to EuromonWhat
do these things have in common?
Visit us at K Show - Hall 11, Booth I65
www.plasma-solution.com
itor survey data showing beverage
consumption increasing on average
by 3 percent annually in developing
countries, in which packed water is
in many cases the only potable water
source. A growing world population
also supports market growth,
Kronseder observed. As PET containers
have continuously reduced
material consumption, they are
true lightweight containers with a
closed economy ecological benefi t,
" as we can work with 100 percent
recycled material in the PET area, "
Kronseder stated.
At the 8,950-square-meter Krones
booth without any fl oor covering,
as a contribution to the environment,
CEO Christoph Klenk
confi rmed, " The order intake is
fantastic. " He stressed sustainability
and digitalization, with all R&D
work at Krones aligned to targets
in these two areas, not just in machines,
but complete lines, systems
and " solutions for tomorrow. "
The Kosme systems solutions subsidiary,
present with its own display
area at the Krones booth, also
plays an important role here.
Corporate Communications
Manager Peter Moertl stressed the
PET bottle market resilience. Consumers
and media had been quite
critical around 2019 on what the
beverage industry was doing, with
many images of bottles in the sea
and on beaches, " leading to great
uncertainty at that time. " Krones
displayed at its Drinktec booth a
World Bank statement: " The equivalent
of a truckload of plastic enters
the oceans every minute. "
But with worldwide PET bottle
demand expected to grow from
533 billion in 2021 to 600 billion
in 2025, " PET is not dead, " Moertl
concluded, adding, " The poor image
of PET is not justifi ed. It can
be sustainable if kept in a closed
loop, bottle-to-bottle. " Krones
contributes here with Metapure
W (washing) and Metapure S (decontamination
and SSP solid state
poly condensation) lines.
KRONES AG
Hall 9,
Jochen Hirdina, head of plastics
technology, showed Plastics
News the latest fourth-generation
Contiform stretch blow molding
machine, which can
produce 100,000 bottles
per hour. The
Booth C29
new machine now has
a blue column on one
corner. This is not
just optics, however,
as Hirdina explained
that a LED lamp integrated
at the top of each blue
column keeps machine operators
alert to machine status.
Blue light from within a blue box
is used to provide 100 percent bottle
inspection at up to 32 points on
a bottle, to ensure correct material
distribution and to control the
entire process. Contiloop AI artifi -
cial intelligence helps to " keep the
process stable all the time, " which
is particularly important with recycled
PET with its inevitable lower
consistency than virgin PET.
The AI system also allows for ambient
temperature and humidity, as
well as preform feed and discharge
temperatures, presenting process
changes on a human-to-machine
interface display for operators.
Longer heating lamps are closer
to preforms being heated, making
the entire Contiform machine more
compact and reducing energy consumption
by 12 percent. There is
always high energy consumption
with compressed air supply, but
this has also been reduced by a
fi ve-valve block replacing the earlier
four-valve block, with eight
times faster reaction time. An Air
Wizard Triple three-stage air recycling
system has reduced compressed
air consumption on the
new Contiform machine.
" Skip-and-run " technology also
improves effi ciency by allowing
other molds to run when a mold
is taken out. This avoids scrapping
all of the preforms. Hirdina
said the technique was tested at a
customer and reduced stoppages
by 80 percent, from two stops per
hour to one stop per hour.
Krones introduced digital printing
at Drinktec 2017. Staff at Drinktec
2022 showed PN a glass bottle
with a thick embossed pattern
applied by digital printing, advising
that this technique could fi nd
its way to plastic bottles in the
future, as soon as a more fl exible
material is developed.
http://www.imflux.com http://www.plasma-solution.com
Plastics News - Show Daily - October 19, 2022

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