Parma, Italy — Sidel Group has developed a new base to increase the stability of oval PET containers by up to 25 percent.
The company's StarLite HPC brand base is an alternative for PET and recycled PET bottles that has a new geometry for anti-rocking designs, according to a company news release.
The design is based on a 360-degree continuous contact surface that improves tilt angle and may be combined with structural ribs and oval push-up.
"The doubled sitting surface and the balanced stretching ratios between small and large sides enable better material distribution, while avoiding base sagging," Laurent Naveau, packaging expert at Sidel, said in the release.
The design improves the stability of empty or filled containers and it improves the customer experience, the release also says.
In addition, the structured base improves material distribution, prevents unexpected base roll-out and contributes to light-weighting opportunities, the release says, giving an example of a 0.5 gram PET reduction for a 500 milliliter container base.
For plastics processors, the StarLite HPC base is easy to blow and reduces blow molding pressure by up to 10 percent, which is a three-bar decrease for a 420 ml container. It also makes it possible to push the process speed limit and increase production output up to 15 percent higher than the market average, the release says.
For example, the release notes that a flat container produced at 1,600 bottles per hour per mold (b/h/m) with a standard market base can be blown up to 1,800 b/h/m with the StarLite HPC base, with possibilities to reach up to 2,000 b/h/m according to bottle shape.
An investment in a new set of molds equipped with the StarLite HPC base provides a payback in less than one year while reducing GHG emissions, the release also says.
The StarLite HPC is compatible with all generations of Sidel blow molding machines: SBO EvoBlow, SBO Universal, SBO Series2 and SBO Series1 generations of Sidel blow molding machines.
For more information, go to StarLite HPC.