The move would be a logical development to its planned preform compression moulding system

The move would be a logical development to its planned preform compression moulding system

US packaging group Owens-Illinois is likely to develop its own mono-layer barrier PET solution. Philip Bourgeois, manager of materials technology and R&D within O-I’s Plastics Group, told delegates at EPN’s Barrier PET Packaging conference in Brussels yesterday that a mono-layer barrier formulation would be a logical development of the PET preform compression moulding system that will soon go into pre-production trials in its technical centre.

This moulding system, a proprietary high-speed rotary production system developed with compression moulding specialist Toyo Seikan, will deliver up to 50,000 mono-layer preforms an hour. An 8%-16% cost advantage over injection moulding is estimated. Bourgeois said: “We are very close to putting this into production.”

While Bourgeois would not fix a timescale for a barrier material development programme, he said there were “ideas in the pipeline”. Initial evaluations could be complete within 18 months.

O-I is already the world’s leading producer of multi-layer barrier preforms with production volumes running at more than 2 billion a year. Bourgeois said mono-layer barrier would be an addition to this range rather than a replacement for it.

Bourgeois said O-I’s philosophy was to have proprietary technology in the production platform, process and material – what he describes as the “three legs to the stool”. “We are being squeezed by the machine people on one side and the materials people on the other. The processor is being squeezed out. We want to get that back through technology,” he said.