Every few years, the industry will report this exciting prediction that OPP (Oriented PP) bottles will replace PET and glass bottles and are widely used in food or non-food packaging. Today, OPP bottles have become a strong competitor due to their high heat resistance, light weight, good transparency, and cost advantages. At present, its focus is mainly on hot canning applications, especially multi-layer structures or coating barrier bottles. High productivity, optimized preform design and improved PP resin and clearing agent give OPP bottles a competitive advantage, allowing them to replace glass hot fill barriers for packaging of juices, jams, salads, pickles, and tomato sauces. .
Vacuum ribs have previously been used in PET heat set bottles to eliminate the distortion of the bottles when the hot-filled beverage cools to room temperature. The new non-ribbed bottle not only eliminates the phenomenon of “wrinkling of the labelâ€, but also provides beverage designers with more design options to meet their aesthetic needs.
At the same time, PET heat setting technology is no longer maintained. The new "non-ribbed" bottle design reduces weight and improves design freedom. New molds and equipment have also raised production to an unprecedented level.
The increase in hot fill packaging slowed, but some new areas such as tea drinks and functional water drinks are becoming new hot spots
These advances have been achieved with a slight cooling of the hot canned packaging market. It is understood that the current market for hot canned juices remains flat, while the sports drinks market has grown moderately. The new hot spots are tea drinks and enhanced water markets.
Barrier bottles appear
The biggest limitation of OPP is its poor gas barrier properties. OBP bottle's oxygen and carbon dioxide barrier performance is only 1/30 of PET, limiting its use in some containers. To obtain the application, it is necessary to use coating technology or co-injection with a barrier resin. "If the cost effectiveness of the barrier can be determined, then OPP will certainly be widely used in the hot canning field. In addition, the upper limit of the temperature that PET can tolerate is only 85°C." Shawn Sheppard, Chemical Product Development Manager, Milliken Chemicals Say. Milliken produces mainly additives for PP and PET.
For this reason, it is not surprising that the progress of current OPP bottles is mainly focused on the research and development of multi-layer structures. Ball Corporation is a leading company in this field. It acquired innovative multilayer OPP technology from Alcan Packaging in 2006. Gamma-Clear transparent wide-mouth OPP bottles produced using this technology can be hot-filled at 93°C. For containing oxygen-sensitive foods.
3-layer (PP/EVOH/PP) OPP barrier bottles were produced using a modified SBO reheat stretch blow molding machine from Sidel. The preform coinjection equipment was from Kortec and Husky Injection Molding Systems. The most critical ingredient in these bottles is the maleic anhydride additive. This compatibilizer eliminates the delamination of the PP, which is the biggest obstacle to the previous PP multilayer structure. Ball has launched the Gamma-Clear OPP bottle as a replacement for glass bottles used in the North American market for a soup and a tomato sauce package. This 769ml 63mm bottle weighs 52g. Mike Vaughn, vice president of product development at Ball, said that the design of the preform is the key to achieving the best transparency of the bottle. Ball is also developing other types of bottles and increasing their production rates.
At K2007, Kortec, a turnkey supplier for coinjection systems, announced that it has obtained Ball's authorization to develop and sell Gamma-Clear technology outside of North America. As a result, Kortec will become an integrated supplier of equipment, materials and technologies for Gamma-Clear multi-layer OPP systems. Husky is expected to become a supplier of coinjection equipment.
Ball's Gamma-Clear OPP wide mouth bottle can be hot-filled with easily oxidized foods. Kortec, a supplier of complete coinjection preform system, has recently been authorized to sell Ball's technology outside of North America
Kortec is developing a high-yield Gamma-Clear system. The system uses a 48-cavity mold to produce 769ml bottles. This wide-mouth bottle has a diameter ranging from 63 to 85 mm and is used to package tomato sauce. The system can also use 144-cavity molds to produce fine-bottles with 28 to 40mm bores.
Ball also developed a Gamma PP retorting flask that can withstand repeated sterilization temperatures up to 121°C. This 6-layer extrusion blow-molded bottle has an EVOH barrier layer between the two adhesive layers, and its patented sealing surface is said to maintain uniform and smooth characteristics at high temperatures without distorting the barrier layer. The first commercial application of the product is a 237 ml bottle of nutritional beverage.
OPP bottle of new power
Despite the renewed interest in OPP bottles, heat-set PET still dominates the plastic hot canning market. The multi-layer PET packaging container uses MSD6 nylon barrier and deoxidizer, which can be used for the packaging of hot canned tea beverages and natural juices. PET has the same glass transparency and better barrier properties than OPP. The new technology has eliminated vacuum bars that prevent PET bottles from collapsing during hot filling, with hot canning temperatures exceeding 82°C. However, PET is inferior to OPP in terms of heat resistance and production cost, and it Faces competition from OPP.
The OPP bottle is manufactured by using a reheat blow-molding machine that can withstand hot canning temperatures up to 96°C. Non-heat-set PET bottles can only be hot-filled at a temperature of 54 to 66 °C. If the preforms are heated to a crystallization temperature below the heat setting treatment, the thermal stability and barrier properties of PET bottles can be enhanced. The OPP bottle is directly used for hot canning without this step.
The future of OPP is more closely linked with costs. Historically, PP is 10 to 15 cents cheaper than PET per pound, and especially PP is 40% lower in density. However, the price gap between the two materials has now narrowed, but PP still has a density advantage. Observers believe that if the price fluctuations of both PET and PP increase, it will help PP to exceed the market demand for PET, thus digesting PP's increase in production in recent years.
Industry experts point out that consumer demand is transitioning from carbonated beverages to "healthy" hot-canned beverages such as juice, tea and functional water. “With the growing market demand for fresher, less processed and more natural beverages, OPP will be more attractive than PET and glass because OPP bottles are lighter and easier to hot-fill.†Kraft Foods Senior Technical Advisor Surendra Agarawal explained.
Improvements in transparency and price competitiveness, as well as increased heat resistance, are making the OPP's prospects for hot filling barrier bottles bright. At the same time, hot-filled PET bottles are also improving their position in the hot-filling field with high-yield and "non-ribbed" designs.
Coating display advantages
Coatings are another way to improve the barrier properties of OPP bottles. Canada's Container Corporation and South Africa's Scientific Invention Research Institute have developed an impregnating/flooding/spraying coating process that increases the oxygen barrier capacity of the bottle by 45 times compared to untreated PET. This FDA compliant coating can be recycled. It is used outside the bottle and in some applications it also requires a sandwich. The company's president Norman Gottlieb said. Container has developed equipment capable of handling 1000 bottles per hour and is developing equipment up to 15,000 per hour. In addition, several projects developed by the company on this basis are also in progress. Container emphasizes that with this coating process, OPP bottles with a barrier performance 45 times that of heat-set PET bottles can be obtained.
Container Company claims it is the only manufacturer of two-step reheated OPP barrier and non-blocking bottles in North America, and its coating technology has already begun trials in 500ml hot-filled containers for juices and tomatoes. These bottles were produced by a Chinese partner and other formulators using Container's EnviroClear stretch blow molding machine. Compared with heat-set PET bottles, they are highly transparent, reduce weight by 30%, and cost much less.
At the same time, Dow Plastics is studying the use of plasma barrier coatings, such as the use of plasma-silica coatings from SIG Plasmax, Germany. Dow's Inspire product line has two PP test grades suitable for stretch blow molding. The resin has high toughness and transparency. Initial tests showed that the plasma treatment reduced the oxygen transmission rate (OTR) of a 500 ml hot-fill bottle from 0.8 ml/pkg/day to 0.02 ml/pkg/day. According to Dow Glass’s application manager Terry Glass, they used a conventional silica plasma coating technique to apply a 5 nm thick coating to the inner surface of the bottle. Dow believes that this barrier layer has better recovery value and less loss of taste and odor than a multilayer structure using EVOH.
OPP bottles for hot canning also benefit from advances in additive technology. At K2007, Millick NX8000 from Milliken Chemical is its fourth-generation sorbitol acetal transparency. It is said that the product can reduce the haze by 50% compared with the previous product Millad 3988i. Millad 3988i is considered an industry standard. The NX8000 solves the problem of bottlenecks and large haze at the bottom of the bottle and increases the stability of the process and reduces the cycle time.
The development of a new type of PP transparent grade resin promoted the development of OPP hot bottle bottling. Basell introduced the transparent random copolymer Profax RP448S. This polymer has an MFR of 40 and is based on new catalytic technology and does not contain a peroxy group. In addition to the optimized barrier coating treatment, the resin allows rapid preform formation at lower melt temperatures. Basell's new business development manager David McKeeman explained. It is understood that this resin is being used by Container for the production of heat-resistant canned OPP bottles, and is also being fully evaluated by the juice drink bottle manufacturers in Latin America for single-step and two-step pull-blow processes.
In Europe, Basell introduced Stretchene PP resins for stretch blow molding, including hot canned application grades. This resin has better rigidity, toughness, transparency and higher yield than previous PP. In particular, the Stretchene RP1685 has a 109°C HDT and very high load strength.
The United States Total plans to commercialize a 15 MFR transparent random copolymer within 6 months. The polymer is used in stretch blow molding hot-press bottles and has better processability, impact resistance, and higher yields than other random copolymers. In the preform production of a 500 ml bottle, the yield of a 23 g heavy preform is up to 1500 per hour per cavity. Total is currently working with several suppliers on barrier coatings for bottles.
Towards "no ribs"
In the production of heat-set PET bottles, most bottle manufacturers, such as Amcor PET Packaging, Graham Packaging, Ball, and Constar International, have developed different types of ribless technology. Previously, hot-filled PET bottles designed with conventional methods required the design of vacuum ribs to prevent distortion of the bottles when hot-filled beverages were cooled to room temperature. The non-ribbed bottle not only eliminates the “wrinkling of labels†phenomenon, but also provides beverage brands with more aesthetic and design choices.
Amcor is trying to combine its Powerflex ribless technology with a ribbed design and succeeded, said Len Zabinko, vice president of beverage bottle customization marketing. The purpose of this combination is to control the distribution of the material, and at the same time to obtain the design of the fine shape of the bottle combined with the vacuum ribs (using a special control system). Currently, these patent designs of Amcor have been licensed to several beverage brands.
Amcor also recently launched the first non-beverage Powerflex bottle. Claude Condiment's new eight flavorings and marinades use 473 ml of long-necked Powerflex bottles for packaging. In addition, Amcor also customized a 414ml Powerflex bottle for the domestic brand Welch.
Amcor's Powerflex ribbed PET hot filling technology was first applied to domestic brands, namely a 414ml juice drink bottle customized by Amcor for Welch. The ribbed bottle eliminates the “wrinkling of the label†and provides a more aesthetically pleasing design
Graham Packaging, meanwhile, is said to be launching the second generation of Active Transverse Panel (ATP) ribbed bottles this year. Mark Leiden, the company’s vice president of global marketing, said the bottles are lighter, softer, and more adaptable. The greatest feature of this type of bottle is that the bottom is inward rather than the bottom outward as before, thus eliminating the cup holder necessary for easy bottle transfer in the filling line.
Graham claims that it has also made significant progress in the development of pull-blow technology that can reduce the weight of PET hot cans without changing the design and without losing performance. At present, this "ultra-light" technology patent is under examination and approval, so details are barely disclosed. It is said that this process can reduce the weight of 237ml-4L bottles by using special mold and preform design and precise material distribution. %~12%.
Another non-ribbed design method is called vertical compensation and was developed by Constar. By designing a horizontal ring on a 296 ml bottle, the bottle can be allowed to shrink 2.3 mm to accommodate the vacuum created during cooling. This kind of bottle has light weight and excellent load strength. Constar also plans to introduce 200 to 355 ml hot-filled bottles using this technology, and one of the 237-ml hot-canned juice bottles will be available.
Rising production
The first aluminum heat-set PET bottle mold was jointly developed by Sidel and Graham. One-third of the mold uses stainless steel. The new F300 mold has increased production and reduced production conversion time. The mold material uses a new type of aluminum alloy containing silver, which has better heat resistance than the standard aluminum material and can withstand high temperatures of 180°C.
Pull-blow equipment suppliers have improved hot-bottling yields to almost the level of cold-filled PET bottles. For example, Sidel introduced the Universal SBO rotary reheating system for hot canning production lines, with a production rate of 1800 per hour per cavity, a 20% increase over previous models. The key features of this equipment are large bottleneck preform feed systems, hot molds and furnaces. Dominique Martin, Sidel's product and marketing manager, says the machine can reduce bottle costs by 30% compared to previous models.
SIPA North America's SFR rotary reheating line for hot cans produces 1500 cells per hour per cavity. The production line uses electric heating molds, heating furnace and blow molding wheel closely. SIPA also introduced a heat-setting linear reheat blow-molding line with a production capacity of 8000 units/hour for a 6-chamber SFL system.
SIG Corpoplast reports that its two-step reheat drawing device for producing lightweight, hot-potted PET bottles uses a unique all-mechanical device instead of a cylinder for stretching. The system uses dual guide cams to reduce wall thickness changes and control shrinkage, so the machine can produce thinner and thicker products at faster speeds. For example, one customer uses the device to reduce a 0.5L hot-potted PET bottle from 36g to 29g.
Equipment manufacturers are also seeking more energy-efficient PET hot-canned bottle production technology. Krones' Air Wizard H air circulation system is said to save air loss by 52% to 60%. The system can convert the discharged air into a low-pressure airflow and re-enter the compressor or be used by the factory for other purposes. Sidel also introduced this air recycling system, which is said to save 25% energy compared to previous heat setting equipment.
To increase the output of heat-setting equipment, Nissei ASB recently introduced a linear reheating model that does not require cooling. According to reports, the heat-fillability of bottles produced by this HSB double-blow molding machine is better than that of bottles made with a heat-setting machine and can be hot-filled at 96°C. In the production of a bottleneck 38mm juice or tea beverage bottle, the 10-chamber system yields up to 7000/h.
The HSB double blow molding equipment was from Nissei ASB. The machine has an improved linear reheat unit, which greatly increases the output of heat-set PET bottles without cooling the mold.
Reprint must specify: Chinese bottle net
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