Sacmi is working to further develop its “innovative” compression blow forming (CBF) technology, in an effort to increase the appeal of the equipment to dairy product manufacturers.
Sacmi is working to further develop its “innovative” compression blow forming (CBF) technology, in an effort to increase the appeal of the equipment to dairy product manufacturers.
Sacmi sales and marketing manager for containers, Luca Nanetti, revealed that the company is developing its CBF technology to produce a larger, more varied range of preform bottle and container sizes.
The Imola, Italy-based firm is also working to expand the machine’s resin range, which currently includes highdensity polyethylene (HDPE), high-impact polystyrene (HIPS), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polypropylene (PP).
Through these developments, Sacmi hopes to expand the appeal of CBF to the manufacturers of drinking yogurts, flavoured milk, fresh milk and other liquid dairy products.
Future dairy CBF preform applications
“We are continuing to develop this technology to extend it to produce new bottle shapes, and for it to work with new types of resin,” said Nanetti. “Development is something that never stops.”
The dairy and pharmaceutical industries currently present the highest level of interest in CBF, said Nanetti.
Dairy industry interest in CBF containers currently comes almost exclusively from probiotic dairy drink manufacturers, according to Nanetti. As time goes on, however, he expects demand from the dairy industry for preform bottles manufactured using CBF to become more varied.
“In dairy, this could be a single serve preform, a 250ml preform, or a 500ml preform, whatever,” he said.
“In future, CBF preform applications within the dairy industry could include drinking yogurt, fresh milk, school based milk, or storable dairy products. Basically any type of liquid dairy that is compliant with the resins we use.”
Lower melting temperatures, competitive manufacturing costs
Sacmi has previously branded its CBF development as the “unique combination” of two well-known and established technologies widely used in the preform container market – compression and blowing.
The process is based on the continuous extrusion of plastic raw material, which is employed first to produce pellets – or gobs – of resin. These are placed in an open mould and moulded into a preform using compression.
Source: Sacmi