Converting equipment

Water bottle vends like a can

Lancaster, PA-based Cloister Spring Water recently introduced its new H2O Cool spring water as "the first, the only 12-oz PET bottle that vends like a can." This allows the bottle to be sold through vending machines designed for canned soft drinks.

April 30, 1998

Converting equipment: Page 77

Coding, Printing & Labeling

Digital-on-demand printing opens new markets for converter

Two six-color digital offset presses drive Watson Label Products into the packaging market. Machines specialize in short-run production of flexibles used primarily for prototyping and promotional purposes.

March 31, 1998

Converting equipment

Is Bud ready for plastics?

Wondering what the world's biggest brewer thinks about plastic bottles for beer? Anheuser-Busch tipped its hand, ever so slightly, at a recent technical conference.

March 31, 1998

Converting equipment

Total Indulgence is a total winner

Winner of the Bernard M. Seid Best of Show Award in the 35th annual awards competition sponsored by the National Assn. of Container Distributors was Tricor Packaging (St.

March 31, 1998

Blisters/clamshells/skin packaging

Changes in drug packaging?

Among the findings presented at a January 8 hearing of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was this disturbing FDA estimate: Some 1.3 million people are injured each year in the U.S.

March 31, 1998

Converting equipment

Resin price protection

At least two firms are now offering hedging services for packagers that buy or manufacture large volumes of rigid or flexible plastic packaging. Such risk management services allow packagers to purchase price-protection contracts for plastic resins, mitigating the effects of resin price fluctuations over a fixed period of time.

February 28, 1998

Sustainability

Bass is bullish on beer in plastic

Few brewers have gone as far as Bass in developing a plastic bottle for beer. Now Bass wonders when U.S. brewers will get on board to help drive bottle costs down.

February 28, 1998

Converting equipment

Color concentrates

Six color concentrates for providing a soft, translucent, "frosted" effect for PP products have been added to the TEKlite® line of concentrates from Teknor (Pawtucket, RI).

February 28, 1998

Converting equipment

Olin takes air out of pool chemicals display

A new line of interlocking modular square containers was designed to meet retailers' needs. Design features, some patented, make containers consumer-friendly as well.

February 28, 1998

Controls & Machine Components

AET Films: Product manual

A 132-page manual from AET Films (New Castle, DE) describes the company's OPP film products. The book is divided into ten sections covering four film types: transparent, metallized, white opaque and label.

February 28, 1998

Bag/pouch fill/seal (pre-made bags)

Bags stretch advantages for packagers and end users

Among FPA's winning packages sold at retail are a flat-bottom flexible bag made on first-of-its-kind vf/f/s machinery, a club-store bag incorporating a transverse zipper for reclosability, and a patented shaker bag that handily dispenses ice melt.

February 28, 1998

Labels

A wide-mouth first in PET

Shatter-resistant and lighter than glass, narrow-neck polyethylene terephthalate bottles for hot-filled beverages have enjoyed steady growth lately. But only now is a wide-mouth PET jar for hot-filled food being commercialized as Tree Top Inc.

February 28, 1998

Feeding/inserting/unscrambling

Woodland Poly casts for western film business

Cast and blown film-making equipment, using metallocene resins, enable Woodland Poly to produce rugged stretch-wrap film in thin gauges for its customers in the west.

February 28, 1998