TECHNOLOGY | CAPS AND CLOSURES


Business Development, Closures at Husky Tech- nologies, indicated light-weighting as one of the essential ways for caps manufacturers to progress towards sustainability. Light-weighting of closures reduces material usage and can be achieved without compromising the consumer experience or performance requirements. Husky makes extensive use of simulation tools to identify areas of waste, eliminate the waste, and then optimise to confirm that both closure performance and consumer experience are preserved.


Tethered caps Tethered caps have become a major development area since passing of the EU Directive 2019/904, which requires that from July 2024 all plastic caps must remain attached to the bottle upon opening to avoid littering and enable cap recycling. This legislation applies to all single use plastic beverage containers having a volume of 3 l or less. Husky has responded to this requirement by developing an intuitive tethered design that enables 160°/180° shell locking. The shell locking provides a positive consumer experience by preventing face-shell interference. Husky’s tethering solutions are available for virtually all industry standard neck finish sizes for water, CSD, and JSDT applications (juice, sports drinks and teas). Other routes to cap sustainability are focused on


the material. White noted the increasing usage of post-consumer recycled HDPE. The challenge with this, he said, is that currently the majority of rHDPE is downcycled into non-food contact products like lawn furniture. An alternative is switching to an alternative material for closure manufacture, such as PET, where there are established recycling streams.


At the NPE 2024 show in Orlando, US in May, Netstal will be demonstrating a fast-cycling caps


production system from the US customer Alltrista. The Netstal machine at the heart of the system is a 4,500 kN clamping force CAP-Line, moulding 26 mm water bottle closures in a 128-cavity mould with a cycle time of 1.9 s. With the CAP-Line series, Netstal now offers machines specifically pre-configured for closure applications. The exhibition machine is based on the high-performance Elios platform and is pre-configured with various equipment features for the efficient production of beverage closures. Thanks to the optimised barrier screw, a smaller injection unit is used. The new design ensures a higher plasticising performance and a better degree of homogenisation. Further options are available for individual optimisations, such as the four-key Smart Operation control panel or the adaptive system pressure reduction for additional energy savings. The complete system running on the Netstal booth is identical to production systems used by the US contract manufacturer Alltrista. The 128-cav- ity mould from Z-moulds is designed to be as small and light as a 96-cavity mould. This results in decisive advantages for closure manufacturers, said Netstal. Compared to previous 128-cavity moulds, the Z-moulds mould fits into a machine with a smaller column distance. The compact design leads to a shorter cycle time and reduced floor space.


Fast cycling Horst Kogler, Head of Business Unit Caps and Closures, said: “Alltrista is the first in the world to produce with 128 cavities and a cycle time of 1.9 s. They produce more than 3.1bn closures with two lines. More output per square metre of production area is currently not possible.” There are further cost savings. With 128 cavities,


the CAP-Line 4500 consumes around 12% less electricity than competitor machines operating with only 96 cavities, said Netstal. Alltrista was also able to reduce the weight of the closures by roughly 25% compared to the previous industry bench- mark. The total amount of material being removed from the product exceeds 930,000 kg per year, said the company. Within the production system, the finished caps


Netstal says its CAP-Line system offers maximum performance and efficiency on a small footprint


28 INJECTION WORLD | March/April 2024


pass through the equipment of system partner Intravis until they are filled into octabins. The central element is the CapWatcher Q-Line, which enables a comprehensive 360° full inspection of the closures. With an accuracy in the hundredths of a millimetre range, the system checks up to 80 closures per second for more than 40 quality


www.injectionworld.com


IMAGE: NETSTAL


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