Focus on performance and product lightening

The leading PET bottle production equipment specialist Sipa is coming to Chinaplas, scheduled in Guangzhou from May 21-24, to demonstrate its strength in sustainable solutions for packaging that combines high performance with low weight. Sipa produces machinery and moulds for injection moulded PET preforms and for stretch blow moulded containers, in sizes from the smallest miniatures to the largest bottles for water coolers. It also provides leading design services that help customers create products that stand out from the competition.

Headquartered in Italy and with manufacturing units in several countries, Sipa has operations in China for preform and bottle mould production, refurbishing and conversion. Sipa is the one of the few European firm providing its Chinese customers with locally designed and produced moulds for preforms and bottles. Its experts in Hangzhou can design moulds, preforms and bottles, and perform a wide range of laboratory tests.

Sipa’s mould refurbishing and conversion services in China are an important element of its total PET preform and bottle mould offering. They provide customers with the option of having some components replaced by new ones in order to improve preform quality (refurbishment), or having the mould converted to produce a completely new (and quite often lighter) design of preform.

The advantage of mould conversion over buying a completely new mould lies in the lower capital investment involved. The base of the existing mould is retained and reused, accelerating return on investment. Customers can choose which alternative works best for them by having local Sipa experts come and carry out a mould audit. They will assess the state of wear of the various mould components on the spot, and propose different options for conversion and/or refurbishing, according to the customer’s request.

These services complement Sipa’s extensive in-house capability to develop and produce complete brand-new high-performance moulds including, in the case of preform moulds, hot runners - also developed and produced by SIPA using class-leading technologies. The hot half of each Sipa mould requires maintenance only after five million cycles, and it is possible to carry out maintenance on components such as piston, flange O-rings and pin valves without taking the whole mould apart.

Sipa’s service centre in Hangzhou, has been operating for 15 years, complementing two others around the world - one in Italy and one in the USA. In that time, its facility has grown rapidly. The Hangzhou operation can now produce 300 cavities a month for blow moulding and 800 cavities for injection moulding. With local mould plate manufacturing as well, a 144-cavity cold half can be created in just eight weeks.