Sidel will showcase a PET blowing system at the forthcoming NPE in Chicago, US that is said to be the fastest machinery of its kind - beating two previous records.
According to the company, the machine will break the blowing speed record per station with 3,000 PET bottles per hour, and it will set a new hourly speed record with 60,000 PET bottles per hour. These records will be set on an SBO 20 Dual Cavity blowing machine.
Introduced in 2000, the SBO 20 DC is the world's fastest blowing machine. It is equipped with 20 moulds, each with two blowing cavities, therefore maximising the productivity and flexibility for a standard size blow wheel, making it the ideal solution for single-serve applications. Its current record stands at 53,000 bottles per hour on a complete bottling line installed at a customer plant in England.
This means that at the NPE show held 23 - 27 June, Sidel will be beating its own record with a machine featuring the latest advances in dual-cavity kinematics while keeping the already very successful Series 2 machine features, at no extra floor space cost, nor number of components. The SBO 20 DC installed at the stand will produce 16 oz. bottles every half hour.
Sidel says that the technology offers the potential to be the most advanced solution for reducing per unit cost of packages. At 3,000 bph its blowing station productivity is said to be nearly twice that of single cavity blowing machines.
In 1989, the company launched the high speed PET blowing segment when it unveiled its SBO 40 - a blowing machine with 40 moulds that could produce bottles ranging from 0.25 l to 2 l, operating at top speeds of 40,000 per hour. Twenty models of this equipment have been installed in the US, Europe, and the Middle East.
Sidel's dual cavity machines go back 10 years when an already very competitive market, the soft drink industry, demanded high output and cost effective platforms for small size bottles.
Today, 43 of these machines are in production around the world. At the beginning of the year, Sidel further expanded its high-speed offering of blowing machines that originally ranged from 4-20 moulds and now includes models up to 28 molds for packages up to 3 litres in size. The first SBO 28 is currently in production in the US operating at speed of 40,000 packages per hour.
PET packaging has proved to be popular with consumers because it is practical, looks good and is well liked by packaging specialists for its economic competitiveness, flexibility and properties. The material continues to make headway in the liquid food packaging market. The increasing speeds of PET blowing machines - now reaching 1,000 bottles per minute for the first time ever - herald the advent of mass applications for this package, to rival glass bottles and drink cans.
Sidel is currently the world's leading manufacturer of machines that produce PET bottles, with more than one in every two PET bottles in the world is made on a Sidel blowing machine.