Kroger Dallas starts producing its own PET bottles in-house

For in-house bottling of its water products, Kroger is no longer outsourcing its PET bottles, but producing them in-house: a response to the ongoing trend towards ever-lighter bottles, and one that also offered opportunities for material economy and concomitant cost savings. The supermarket chain has now installed its first stretch blow-molding machine at its facility in Irving.

• Contiform S30K stretch blow-molding machine
  With the harmonized transport system from infeed of the performs and their thermal treatment in the oven, all the way through to their transfer into the blowing wheel, each of the worksteps involved is clearly comprehensible, and thus ideally suited for first-time users of stretch blow-molding technology.
  The machine features 30 cavities, and when producing 0.5-liter bottles achieves an output of 48,000 containers an hour, each of these PET bottles weighing 12 g.
• AirCo conveyors
  The bottles are securely transported in a triangular shaft on plastic neck-ring guides, eliminating the risk of jamming. In order to assure the bottles’ high quality during transport as well, the AirCo-System system also offers an option for individualized choice of filter systems and their arrestance capabilities.
• Contiroll HS labeler
  This wrap-around labeler handles reel-fed film or paper labels. Thanks to servo-controlled components, quick-change blade units and automatic reel splicing fitted as a standard feature, the high-speed version HS can handle up to 66,00 containers an hour with a single station.