Saving plastics: more important than ever before

In the preform production process, every tenth of a second in cycle time and every tenth of a gram in weight count. And there are plenty of potentials for meaningful savings. To exploit them, two things are necessary: firstly comprehensive knowledge of the properties and the behaviour exhibited by the various preform materials, and secondly a profound insight into the production processes involved – both into preform injection-moulding and into the salient aspects governing subsequent container stretch blow-moulding. You will find both of these in the Krones Group.

MHT AG, a company that has specialised in making PET tools for producing preforms, has been part of the Krones family since 2018. Its performatively excellent high-tech injection-moulding tools

• image all preform designs and threads in common use;
• are suitable for almost all machine platforms known on the market;
• are based on an innovative hot-runner technology developed in-house.

MHT Mold & Hotrunner Technology AG

The ideal package offers persuasively attractive pluses in all situations: in the production process and at the point of sale, during transport and finally during recovery as well. Since Krones has signed up to providing holistically conceived solutions, development work on both bottle design and machine technology goes hand in hand. It is only when both these aspects supplement each other to perfection that the best solutions are arrived at – for producers, consumers and the natural environment alike.

The packaging designers from Krones

• advise clients on design, material, product requirements and technical implementation of packages;
• optimise existing designs in terms of weight, haptics and line efficiency;
• possess in-depth expertise in the ecological and economic requirements involved, such as material selection, recyclability or weight optimisation.

A whole bandwidth of different technical solutions can be found in the Krones portfolio for the journey from the preform to the ready-for-sale product. And the innovation process embraced by Krones sees to it that these solutions grow in line with more stringent market requirements and also provide answers to the challenges of tomorrow. One element of crucial importance in this context is the enviro sustainability programme, because it makes sure that any newly developed products, and any upgrades, too, are focused on eco-efficiency and environmental compatibility right from the start.

Product information Bottle Design

Sustainability Programme enviro

When it comes to reducing the use of materials, we mostly think of the beverages containers first. But if we take a closer look, we can see that there is also plenty of savings potential with secondary packagings.

Doing completely without plastics

It is also possible without film: LitePac Top is an innovative secondary packaging from our own development. Instead of shrink film, it keeps cans and PET containers in shape with an environmentally friendly cardboard clip - and thus meets the pulse of the times in terms of sustainability and resource conservation.

Packaging your containers without film

The difference to many other alternative packaging types: LitePac Top can already be produced on an industrial scale today - and is thus ready for immediate use on the market. This is because the Krones Varioline can handle the most diverse types of secondary and tertiary packaging, including LitePac Top. 

Discover the many possibilities offered by the Krones Varioline

Consuming less plastic 

You don't always need a new type of packaging: There's also still plenty of material to be saved in existing pack types. 

Optimising the machines 

The Variopac Pro packaging machine offers several options for noticeably reducing shrink-film consumption - by upgrading to reduce:

• the film thickness by up to 25 μm.
• the lateral film projection.
• the film residue on the film reel.

In a recently announced co-operation agreement, Krones and Stadler Anlagenbau GmbH are lighting the touchpaper for a strong circular economy. The shared aim is to make the benefits of plastic recycling a reality that is as achievable and profitable as possible for customers all over the world. Firstly, by offering their existing, tried-and-tested solutions for sorting and recycling technology as turnkey complete factories from a single source. And secondly by collaborating on the development of new solutions, processes and technologies to do with the sorting and treatment of waste.

Stadler Anlagenbau GmbH

• is one of the market leaders in the sorting systems technology
• has about 450 employees
• has sold already more than 350 turnkey lines and 2,000 single components worldwide
• develops and manufactures technology for sorting all kind of different materials – this includes plastic waste, paper, cartons, household waste and commercial waste.

Stadler Anlagenbau GmbH

Buy, drink – and that’s it? Not by a long way! From a consumer’s viewpoint, the lifespan of a PET bottle may seem short. But the bottles themselves know better. After all, they are made of a material with outstanding recycling properties. And that talent can be utilised again and again.

So it is all the more surprising that billions of PET bottles per year are still not being re-used – meaning a gigantic raw-material source is simply lying fallow. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates the value of plastic waste unused today at 80 to 120 billion dollars a year. An enormous potential just waiting to be tapped. And that’s not all: recycling plants turn waste into new products – and can thus make a substantial contribution towards reducing the global littering problem.

The MetaPure recycling systems

• … recycle PET containers
  • into flakes (on request with direct downstream processing into new products).
  • in different material qualities.
  • right up to food-grade PET in line with FDA, EFSA and other certificates.
• … recycle containers made of polyolefins (PO)
  • into flakes.
  • in the upcycling approach for high-quality re-use.
• … are available as individual machines – or in the shape of a complete single-sourced recycling plant.

Product information MetaPure