Alltrista combines innovations in processing and materials to enter new business areas in a competitive manner. #technologyinaction

A three-year development program introduced three sizes of OTC painkiller bottles, which combined the use of new machinery, resins and additives, which can reduce the bottle weight by an average of 20% while maintaining the same or better MVTR.

Blow molders and suppliers of resins, additives and machinery have jointly developed a series of medicine bottles that have reduced weight by 15-20% and moisture vapor transmission rate (MVTR) by 35%. For molder Alltrista Plastics, this comprehensive improvement in sustainability and bottle performance has become a gateway to major new business areas.

The mold maker (formerly Jarden Plastic Solutions) is located in Greenville, South Carolina, but also has factories in Springfield, Missouri and Reedsville, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom, and has approximately 1,000 employees. Its core business is medical products, but about five years ago, the company decided to expand into the field of pharmaceutical packaging. It did this in a rather ambitious way, using a new type of blow molding technology unique to SACMI in Italy, called compression blow molding (CBF). In that process, a machine extrudes a "hockey" plastic blank, cuts it and places it in a compression mold on a rotating wheel to form a thread, and then stretch blow molding (details here). These machines can process HDPE, PS and PET at speeds up to 12,000 bottles per hour.

According to SACMI, Alltrista has become the world's largest user of CBF technology-eight machines with stations of 16 and 20 have been ordered, and more. The reason is explained by Mike Castillo, Director of Rigid Packaging at Alltrista: Compared with injection blow molding (IBM), eliminating the hot runner system in CBF can reduce weight and provide more uniform material distribution. "CBF addresses the particularly challenging areas of the bottle thread and bottom where the material is concentrated," he explained. SACMI also pointed out that CBF allows lower melt temperatures and eliminates shear in the IBM injection molding stage, both of which are beneficial to high molecular weight resins.

Combine weight reduction and performance that cannot be achieved with standard blow molding machines and HDPE resins.

This factor was very useful for Alltrista's first large-scale medicine bottle project started five years ago. In addition to Sacmi, it also brought two other partners. Dow Packaging & Specialty Plastics offers a new bimodal HDPE, Continuum DMDD-6620 Health+, with a density of 0.958 and an MI of 27. According to Dow, this resin has an MVTR that is 43% lower than standard HDPE compared to a special nucleating agent additive produced by Milliken Chemical Company called UltraGuard. This additive provided in the form of a masterbatch causes the normal random distribution of crystal blocks in Dow HDPE to be arranged like bricks on the wall, forming a "torturous path" for water molecules, allowing them to pass through and causing 20-60 Milliken says that the transfer rate of moisture, O2, CO2, and solvents has been reduced by %. Subsequently, Dow launched the Continuum DMDE-6620 Health+, which already contains UltraGuard, without the need to mix on the printing press.

Two years ago, GlaxoSmithKline launched Ibuprofen Advil tablets in three sizes (15, 18 and 25 ml), and all of this is here. Castillo said that in a variety of size ranges, Alltrista bottles made by CBF using the new resin/additive system have reduced weight by an average of 20% compared to previous IBM versions and maintained an "equal or better" MVTR. He attributed the weight reduction to CBF and approximately a 60/40 ratio resin/additive system. The current plan envisages the production of more than 80 million Advil bottles per year.

This success is just the beginning of Alltrista's new pharmaceutical packaging business. Since then, it has produced a 90-ml HDPE bottle for another customer, which has reduced its weight by 15%, produced 100 million bottles per year, and saved 350,000 pounds. Alltrista also launched a series of Allstock pharmaceutical bottles and caps, with 11 sizes ranging from 50 to 500 ml. These will use standard pharmaceutical HDPE resins. Using CBF, Alltrista's goal is to save 2.8 million pounds of bottles and an additional 3.5 million pounds of bottle caps annually through a proprietary redesign. Castillo says this can be achieved if the customer needs the additional barrier provided by the Dow/Milliken material system. For example, a 100 ml bottle can reduce weight by 15% while reducing MVTR by 35%.

Castillo pointed out that many brand owners and packaging companies are looking to improve sustainability. One method is to use post-consumer recycling (PCR), but this will place a huge regulatory burden on expensive and time-consuming testing. "You can't get there overnight-it may take five years." Although there is no exemption from regulatory costs, lightweighting through process, material, and tool solutions is a faster way to achieve the same goal.

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