Sutton-in-Ashfield, England — R&D/Leverage Europe, a tooling supplier for injection stretch blow molding (ISBM) machines, developed a system for Robinson Packaging to produce a 500 milliliter PET round bottle for the My Fabulosa brand product range.
The bottle doesn't appear technically difficult to process, but round containers are more susceptible to poor material distribution and lensing compared to oval bottles.
R&D/Leverage was tasked with developing a system to overcome those problems. The company was involved with the product design, tool manufacture and tooling approval onsite.
The team had a tight timeline due to rapidly growing demand for My Fabulosa products and market conditions fueled by the global pandemic.
R&D/Leverage met the challenges, according to Steve Bell, new business development manager at Robinson.
"The level of professionalism, service and reliability provided by R&D/Leverage played a major part in helping us to bring this project in — not only on time, but ahead of schedule with the tool producing acceptable parts from the very first trial," Bell said in a news release.
Robinson's big customer, Fabulosa, also is pleased with the result, according to a statement from the Crewe, England-based manufacturer of cleaning products.
Fabulosa's 2020 sales were up 1,000 percent to 40 million pounds. Company officials pointed to a shift from people giving their homes a weekly deep cleaning to more frequent cleaning with multi-purpose products that disinfect.
"Robinson has proved itself a highly adept packaging partner," the Fabuloso statement says. "It has helped to design a bottle that couples stand-out shelf appeal with optimum performance on our production line and through the supply chain."
The success of the project meant Fabulosa didn't have to source bottles from different suppliers or adjust its production lines in any way.
"Having dependable, stable supply as well as dedicated capacity is critical in ensuring we achieve our growth aspirations. Robinson's philosophy of supporting brands with dedicated production cells is a perfect fit for this ambition," the Fabulosa statement says.
R&D/Leverage Europe offers ISBM tooling for product evaluation, tooling design, manufacture and technical service assistance. The company also has on-site ISBM machines for pilot tooling, material trials, color trials and production tool qualification.
For more information, email [email protected] or go to www.rdleverage.com.