Sidel enhances stability in personal care bottles with asymmetric oval-base innovation

07 May 2021 --- Sidel is introducing an oval bottle base alternative for flat PET containers called StarLite HPC. The “clever structure” is designed asymmetrically to better enable material distribution, which improves its stability.

Compared to Sidel’s current flat container solution, StarLite HPC increases container stability by up to 25 percent, increasing production uptime and improving the consumer experience, says the company.

“We evaluate stability with the ‘tilt angle.’ The filled bottle is positioned on a planned surface, which is moved up until the bottle falls, evaluating the more unstable side of the container,” Laurent Naveau, a packaging expert from Sidel, tells PackagingInsights.

Applicable for both opaque and transparent PET resins, StarLite HPC complies with requests for virgin or recycled PET (rPET). The solution targets spirits flasks and home and personal care products. 

Rock the bottle
The flat base’s new “anti-rocking” design is based on a 360-degree continuous contact surface, which improves tilt angle and may be combined with structural ribs and oval push-up. 

“The doubled-sitting surface and balanced stretching ratios between small and large sides enable better material distribution, while avoiding base sagging,” explains Naveau.The anti-rock design improves empty or filled container stability by up to 25%.

The asymmetric structure further prevents unexpected base roll-out and contributes to lightweighting opportunities. Notably, the new design scraps 0.5 g PET for a 500 mL container base. 

StarLite HPC is compatible with all generations of Sidel blow molding machines, including SBO EvoBlow, SBO Universal, SBO Series2 and SBO Series1. 

Decrease the bar
The new geometric design allows the StarLite HPC base to be easy to blow and reduces blow molding pressure by up to 10 percent. This translates to a 3 bar decrease for a 420 mL container. 

The design also makes it possible to push the process speed limit further. According to Sidel, production output can be increased up to 15 percent higher than the market average. 

For instance, 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. Depending on the bottle shape, Sidel estimates possibilities could reach up to 2,000 b/h/m. 

By investing in StarLite HPC base molds, customers can achieve “rapid payback” in less than a year while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Updates from Sidel
Flat oval containers have existed in the packaging industry since plastic was introduced, states Naveau. The standard shampoo bottle is a textbook example of PET flat containers and their respective blow-molding technologies. 

Since 1993, Sidel has been introducing different packaging innovations to improve bottle performance. In its latest beverage bottling developments, Sidel equipped Indian PepsiCo franchise RJ Corp with its Aseptic Combi Predis technology. 

In Japan, it brought its novel aseptic packaging technology for carbonated and still drinks in PET bottles late last year.

By Anni Schleicher