The world’s most important Plastics, Caps and Closures conference is now 10 years old. The coming edition, to be held in Nice on 4th - 5th November at the Hotel Le Negresco, will once again see Sacmi play a prominent role with a presentation of the latest innovations developed by the Group on the compression technology front.
And it is the latest advances in this technology – which have made Sacmi a global leader in both product and process innovation within the closures industry – that will be showcased at Nice by Iacopo Bianconcini, sales area manager for Russia and marketing manager of the Closures&Containers business unit. One such advance is the Sacmi-developed COOL+ system, the enhanced cooling system that provides significantly lower cap cooling times and, consequently, shorter overall cycle times, raising productivity by up to 50%.
This solution enhances the already considerable competitive advantages that compression technology offers cap manufacturers and reinforces Sacmi’s role as a strategic beverage industry partner in the making of major investment decisions. The COOL+ system can, in fact, be installed on all CCM (continuous compression moulding) machines – Sacmi’s range of cap-making compression machines, which have won worldwide acclaim on account of their reliability, productivity and already-short cycle times. Now, those times can be reduced even further thanks to this innovative system that “doubles” the cooling circuit to let the coolant act closer to the side wall of the cap; this results in a more than proportional reduction in cooling times and, consequently, has a highly positive impact on overall cycle times.
In addition to COOL+ Sacmi will, at this 10th edition of the Closures Conference, also be highlighting technological developments for the treatment of raw materials. In this regard we shall be illustrating the advantages of adding calcium carbonate when producing 2-part caps with compression technology: more economical than polypropylene, calcium carbonate can, in fact, be added to the mix in a percentage of 25% (with the aid of dedicated moulds), a solution already successfully tested by Sacmi in the production plant of a major Asian customer. The outcome: same output quality, lower costs, productivity raised by up to 20%, reduced energy consumption.
And it is energy consumption that constitutes another key aspect of Sacmi’s presentation. We shall be illustrating energy-saving solutions particularly relevant to the CCM range: the new generation of machines is characterised, in fact, by the presence of a displacement pump that controls oil circulation inside the moulds; the pump is designed to optimise delivery rates and pressure as a function of the production process, thus cutting consumption. Those advantages are, from an energy viewpoint, enhanced even further by the COOL+ system, which acts closer to the surface to be cooled, thus minimising the energy needed to complete the process. In light of the above, Sacmi’s presentation will also offer a comparative assessment of alternative technological scenarios by showing participants both the general advantages of compression technology with respect to injection and the incremental advantages of the COOL+ solution with respect to standard compression.