Krones’ Contiform AseptBloc technology has created a square 500 mm polyethylene (PET) bottle weighing 12.5 gram for aseptic filling.
Presented for the first time at interpack 2014, the bottle was created using an adapted container design that takes the haptics of the bottle and uses a light 33 mm neck finish as a basis.
This design makes use of a square, rounded-off bottle design.
Up until now, a 20 gram PET bottle was the standard weight required for aseptic filling.
The use of less material produces a noticeable reduction in material costs and contributes to the sustainable, ecological filling of sensitive beverages with a high degree of microbiological safety.
The container is completely recyclable and can be filled at high speeds.
Preform sterilization with sterile blow molder
Using Contiform AseptBloc technology, the company is including its stretch blow molder in the aseptic system by combining the preform sterilization unit with a sterile blow molder.
This fulfills the optimum conditions needed for aseptic filling with its preform sterilization unit, aseptic blowing module, filler and capper.
Sterilizing preforms has a wide range of advantages over sterilizing previously blown PET containers.
The preforms have a considerably simpler shape for sterilization and a smaller surface area.
In contrast to the bottles, there is no risk that the preforms will shrink.
This allows the bottle weight to be reduced, thus saving material and does not require the relax blowing method.
During sterilization, the process window for reaching the necessary germ reduction is considerably larger than for bottles, thus increasing the reliability and stability of the process.
