Plastics News - Show Daily - October 24, 2022 - 35

SHOW DAILY
Plastics News, October 24, 2022 * 35
The future is refi llable for Nissei ASB
By Joseph Pryweller
Plastics News Staff
Japanese-based blow molding
machine producer Nissei ASB Machine
Co. Ltd. sees the future, and
it is in packaging that can be reused
and returned.
The company demonstrated the
molding of a 1-liter, refi llable PET
bottle at its booth at K 2022, showing
off the possibility of creating a
returnable bottle that could open
market possibilities in an age
where sustainability concerns are
again moving front and center. The
bottle was molded using a double-blow
heat-set process on an
injection stretch machine.
While refi llable and returnable
bottles are a bit uncommon in
the U.S. market, there is growing
interest in a global market for the
practice, said Nissei ASB Sales
Manager Craig Arnold. Using the
heat-set process, the bottles can
make as many as 25 trips and
weigh around 10 grams less than
a typical refi llable bottle, he said.
The company demonstrated the
process with sparkling water at
the show, but Arnold said other
applications also were possible.
The bottles could also be
made from recycled PET while
maintaining the number of trips
the bottle could be used, Arnold
said. The equipment can produce
as many as 20 million returnable,
refi llable bottles annually.
" It's a growing market, " he said.
" We'd like to go to the next stage
with this and think a returnable, refi
llable bottle might make sense. "
Nissei ASB is no stranger to refi
llable bottles. It launched the fi rst
refi llable PET bottle in the German
market in 1989 for juices and soft
drinks and has supplied the equipment
in similar machines to more
than 20 countries, according to the
company's news release.
Compared
with glass-based
refi llable bottles, the PET counterparts
can be 90 percent lighter,
on average. While the bottles
weigh approximately twice as
much as a single-use PET bottle
of similar size, they consume less
than 10 percent of PET material
during their lifetimes vs. a single-use
container.
The company also envisioned
several other innovative packaging
products in PET. At the show, the
company showed an airless pump
bottle with an outer layer of PET
with an inner bag made of polypropylene.
Extracting the product
in an airless system is faster and
more effi cient than typical pumping
units, as the system keeps all
the oxygen in the bottle without
releasing it during dispensing.
The product already is being
used for cosmetics and lotions
and in Japan has even had some
use in soy sauce, Arnold said. " We
think this has a future in other
parts of the world, " he said.
Nissei also debuted a bag-inbox
system in a large package size
with sharp edges and a handle. As
product is released from the 20-liter
container, the outer PET layer
crumples and diminishes in size,
making for easier storage and less
space requirements. While the
concept of a large bag-in-box is fairly
new, the company has already
sold eight to 12 systems in Japan,
Arnold said. The transparent PET
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container
uses a fl exible
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that can be
used to hold
a variety of
liquids.
NISSEI ASB
MACHINE
Hall 14,
Booth B38
A major
focus on
Nissei's new technology is changing
consumer behavior to accept
larger-sized storage containers and
more reusable options, the latter
a theme at Nissei's booth. That
would assist with sustainability efforts
and decrease the amount of
single-use packaging on the market.
The company launched a U.S.
We'd like to
go to the next
stage with this and
think a returnable,
refi llable bottle
might make sense. "
Craig Arnold
Nissei ASB
subsidiary, Nissei ASB Co.,
in
Smyrna, Ga., fi ve years ago and
already is expanding capabilities
at that facility, Arnold said. The
Smyrna subsidiary is creating
an enhanced
technical
service center
that can
conduct material
trials
and develop
unit cavities,
he said. The
company is
also offering
demonstrations
of its
equipment at the center.
While the facility started with
30 people in 2017, it now is up to
45 employees serving the U.S. and
Canadian markets, he said. Once
the technical service center is
implemented in Georgia, the company
is expecting to offer similar
centers in Germany and Singapore,
Arnold said.
The Nagano, Japan-based company
also is embracing the use
of e-commerce, developing a new
platform now in beta testing that
will allow spare parts to be ordered
online any time of day or
night. Customers will be able to
see the status of an order and order
history, Arnold said.
" If it's 10 p.m. at night and a customer
needs a part, they won't have
to wait until the morning to contact
us and place an order, " he said.
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