New advance in Serac Agami technology allows bottle production from pre-printed plastic sheet reels
By Canadian Packaging staff
Automation Design & Innovation Bottling Agami bottle thermoforming pre-printed PP reels SeracNew technology wins Serac a 2015 World Dairy Innovation award.
Serac’s groundbreaking Agami technology, which received the World Dairy Innovation Award 2015 in the Manufacturing /Process Innovation category, continues to extend bottle thermoforming possibilities by enabling manufacturers to produce their bottles out of pre-printed plastic sheet reels.
Decorated bottles in one step using pre-printed PP reels
Serac has been very successful in the drinking yogurt market with its Agami thermoforming machines that allow bottle production from PS (polystyrene) or PP (polypropylene) reels.
The company has recently gone a step further by adapting its simple, efficient and reliable solution to the thermoforming of bottles out of pre-printed PP reels.
The technical challenges for this new development included defining precisely the features required for the PP sheet as well as the printing inks and to provide perfect positioning of the printed reel together with precise advance rate control.
For this particular application, Serac equipped its Agami machines with sensors and sets of cameras that ensure fast initial machine setting with minimum waste, and systematically checking that the PP sheet is at the right place for the next stroke during production.
With this new development Serac may offer the smallest footprint ever for on-site bottle manufacturing, using a vertical thermoforming process especially since there is no need for a labeler or sleeve applicator.
Agami technology: more than machines
This latest development illustrates Serac’s ability to offer innovative packaging solutions and global support to customers.
For all Agami projects, Serac provides technical assistance on plastic sheet machinability as well as testing under real manufacturing conditions (pilot molds, pre-printed PP).
Serac also proposes a full range of services around packaging design that include bottle creation, 3D printed samples for design testing and closing system optimization.
Agami technology: World Dairy Innovation Award winner
Main benefits:
- Cost efficient : economical on-site manufacturing equipment with low energy consumption ; low plastic weight per bottle ; possibility of producing bottles out of pre-printed plastic sheets (no sleeve required);
- Space saving : vertical process ; bottles go directly to the filling machine (no storage tanks and unscramblers needed);
- Easy to operate : easy to shut down and restart ; requires very few plastic processing skills;
- Versatile : PP or PS as raw material ; various design possibilities, shapes and appearances ; standard or calibrated necks.
Main applications:
- Standard, squeezable or microwavable bottles;
- From 100 ml up to 500 ml;
- For pasteurized milks, drinking yogurts (see image above), probiotics, ESL dairy drinks, sterilized milks, UHT flavored milks…
With three new Agami machines recently sold in the U.S. and Europe for PP thermoforming, Serac confirms the benefits and reliability of its innovative technology as well as a real interest from the dairy market for on-site bottles production.
About Serac:
Serac specializes in the design and manufacture of liquid filling and capping machines as well as blow molding equipment. With over 5,200 machines installed in more than 100 countries, our customer base boasts a wide variety of machines in many different industries with a very diverse customer profile. For more information, visit www.serac-usa.com.
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