Coating technology brings new competitiveness to beer PET bottles

Beer requires a high degree of oxygen barrier protection to reduce oxygen ingress through the vessel (1 ppm), and it also requires strict carbon dioxide barriers to limit carbonation saturation losses through the vessel walls and caps to within 15%. Beer containers and caps must be carefully selected.

As a comprehensive solution provider with 20 years of experience in PET packaging, Sipa has a highly specialized technology and has developed a range of skills, technologies and services. This time, SIPA's solution for the beer company is Smartcoat® technology. Smartcoat® is a new technology that applies coatings on the outside of containers. It was developed to improve the gas barrier properties of PET and polypropylene packaging and has been patented. Smartcoat® is the first coating process with high productivity. It is designed as a modular coating production line with throughputs ranging from 12,000 to 42,000 containers per hour. It is a system that provides coating on the outside of containers by infiltration, centrifugal filtration and then infrared or UV drying. This method was developed jointly by the University College and the private enterprise. It uses two coats: the inner layer is a gas (oxygen and carbon dioxide) barrier layer, and the outer layer can protect the inner layer properties to ensure that the coating Mechanical, technical, and chemical impedance forces. According to the special needs of the product, the oxygen and carbon dioxide barrier properties of the system can be changed by changing the thickness of the coating on the outside of the container. Oxygen barrier can be increased by 12 times compared to conventional methods, and the barrier to carbon dioxide can also be increased by 2 to 4 times, depending on the degree of carbonation and the characteristics of the contents. After coating, the container enters the filling stage directly and can be hot filled, aseptically filled, pasteurized or super-cleaned. Sipa's patented Smartcoat® technology has been fully tested on PET containers and is currently being tested on polypropylene containers.

Currently, Sipa is installing an industrial coating line with a capacity of 30000 bph. This line will produce two sizes of containers, 300ml and 1000ml. The bottle remains in the form of a traditional beer bottle, the color is still amber, and the shape is still a flask with a 28mm bottle diameter. The Smartcoat® production line requires very little daily maintenance and weekly maintenance, quick changeover, use of a variety of container shapes, stable production, design conforms to the HACCP system, stable product quality, and ease of use.

Reprinted from: Huayin Media