PET bottle in a lightweighting version

PET bottles used in beverage production processes manage with significantly less PET raw material in a lightweighting version. Special design steps in creating the plastic bottle, e.g. for soft drinks and mineral water, enable a lighter weight to achieved.
For Niagara Bottling, USA, Krones Stretch Blow-Moulding Technology, with its bottle design team, came up with a lightweighting concept that reduced the weight of a 0.5-litre PET bottle from 12.5 g to 9.9 g. The management at Niagara calculates the savings achieved by this lightweighting initiative: “2.6 grams less weight per bottle means around 10,000 tons of PET saved annually, given four billion fills a year, which significantly reduces the CO₂balance of our products.” 
Five Krones high-speed PET bottling lines with a maximum speed of 72,000 containers an hour at various of Niagara facilities are now producing these ultra-light PET bottles. Krones’ job package in each case included the route from the Contiform stretch blow-moulding machine, the filling and labelling technology, all the way through to the Variopac Pro TFS packers. To ensure efficient operator control of the lines, the layout plans were created using a twin-line concept. i.e. in a mirror-image configuration.

What steps are required for PET bottles in a lightweighting version?
Optimised design of a PET bottle enables lighter preforms to be handled in the stretch blow-moulding process. The change in the neck geometry, thinner walls with structural elements for assuring high stability, reduced weights of the neck finish and closure, plus the weight reduction in the base area are the salient worksteps in the lightweighting process.