US Juice Manufacturer gains competitive advantage with light weight HDPE bottles using GEC Wheel Technology

Graham Engineering Corporation of York, PA, USA has recently been selected by a major US Juice manufacturer to assist with substantial restructure of their manufacturing plant. They believe the investment will give them a clear competitive advantage in the US Juice manufacturing market.

Two Graham Mega 22 extrusion blow moulding dual parison Wheel Machines are currently being installed in the plant. The systems feature a continuous upward extrusion parison where the parison is captured by revolving sets of blow moulds as they pass over the extrusion head.

The GEC wheel technology offers high output from a single machine and establishes an industry benchmark for extrusion blow moulded bottle production.

The new Mega 22 Wheel machines that are being installed have 88 cavities and will be producing monolayer HDPE juice bottles, four per clamp station.

At a speed of 8.5 RPM, each machine will produce 44,880 x 230ml bottles per hour weighing only 8.5 gms.

The combined output of the installation will be 2 million plus bottles per day

Advantages and features of the GEC Wheel technology include:

• significant cost savings per container produced

• wheel system ensures high product consistency

• lightweight containers can be achieved via tight programming parison control

• optional multilayer barrier capability (oxygen, UV and moisture)

• optional aseptic production capability

• resin-efficient and energy-efficient operation

• Very compact footprint

• Excellent ‘return on investment’ payback