India’s largest beverage company, Parle Agro, has chosen Sipa for high-volume production of PET preforms for fruit drink bottles. Parle Agro has five Sipa XForm injection moulding systems hard at work producing 5.7 million PET preforms every day to make bottles for fruit drinks. There are two 500-ton systems and three 350-ton. Between them, they make preforms for 160, 250 and 300 ml bottles for Parle Agro’s famous Appy Fizz sparkling apple drink and Frooti mango drink. The preforms range in weight from 8.5 to 13.5g.

The company, headquartered in Mumbai, has many reasons for opting for the Sipa machines. First off, it says the XForm units provide the flexibility it needs when introducing new designs and concepts; for example, not long ago, Parle Agro developed a customized bottle neck for the Appy Fizz 160-ml bottle.

The company takes pride in being one of few companies manufacturing PET preforms derived from the bottle design with the best stretch ratio specifications. Parle Agro’s latest development with the best bottle stretch ratios has been for Appy Fizz 160-ml bottle, at the best-optimized grammage of 9.6 g.

Then there is the issue of output: XForm injection moulding machines can take moulds with more cavities than most other competitors, and they also have the shortest dry cycle times.

Parle Agro is one of the first companies in the Asia Pacific region to install a machine - an XForm 500 - running with a 180-cavity mould - from Sipa, obviously. Sipa has also supplied two 128-cavity moulds. The XForm units are equally capable of operating with moulds from other suppliers.

“But it’s not just about quantity. Preform product quality is high and consistent”, said Jitendra Kulkarni, senior manager technical at Parle Agro. “All this, while using less energy than competitors”, Kulkarni added.