Why Three-Party Collaboration Leads to Bottle Manufacturing Success

In the bottle manufacturing industry, a three-party collaboration strategy between additive suppliers, converters, and brands can be crucial for achieving optimal efficiency and reaching sustainability goals. This triangular approach helps ensure that each stakeholder's needs and goals are met, ultimately benefiting the entire supply chain and the environment. This article discusses the role of process aids during the bottle-blowing stage, highlights areas of hesitation regarding their use, and outlines the benefits that can be achieved through a three-party collaboration strategy.

The Role of Process Aids in Bottle Blowing

Bottle-blowing process aids are specialized additives that are added during preform production at the converter, enabling blow molders to optimize their blow and bottle performance. Although these process aids do not directly benefit preform manufacturers, who produce the initial plastic preforms, the advantages are realized at the bottle blower stage, where the preforms are heated and blown into their final bottle shapes.

Primary benefits of using bottle-blowing process aids include:

1. Reduced Energy Consumption: By optimizing the bottle-blowing process, these additives can lower the energy required to produce each bottle. Specifically, they can:

a. Reduce energy to the blowing lamps allowing preforms to heat faster
b. Reduce blower pressure so bottles are easier to blow

This reduction in energy consumption can not only cut costs, but it can also lower the carbon footprint of the manufacturing process. The impact can be even greater if the blow molder can measure compressor energy savings.

2. Bottle Quality: Bottle-blowing process aids can improve material distribution within the bottle. They lend greater control and consistency to reduce blowouts (where bottles fail to form correctly), reduce scrap, and drive improved productivity overall.

3. Increased Throughput: To achieve desired bottle quality, many blow molders will slow the blow speed, giving the preform optimal time to heat before blowing. Using process aids can expand the blow molder’s processing window, allowing the molder to increase blow speeds without sacrificing bottle quality.

Why Brands and Preform Manufacturers May Hesitate

Despite the clear benefits at the blow molding stage, both brands and preform manufacturers are often hesitant to specify or support the use of recycle-friendly bottle-blowing process aids. This hesitation can stem from several factors:

1. Cost / Value Conundrum: The preform manufacturer often incurs the cost of a process aid while the blow molder realizes the benefits. Three-way communication can help address this issue and identify the overall value. The brand or blow molder must stipulate the importance of using a blow molding process aid. If determined by the brand, the blow molder must be aware that process aids are in the preform because of the dramatic impact this can have on the blow molding process.

2. Lack of Awareness: Brands and preform manufacturers may not fully understand the advantages process aids can offer, particularly since the benefits are primarily seen at the bottle blowing stage.

3. Bottle Development Process: New developments are conducted using small-scale lab equipment, which serve as excellent molding platforms. While these machines clearly measure energy savings (15–30%), they do not provide material distribution values. Typically, energy savings alone is sufficient to advance to the production blow molding stage. For this stage to be successful, a large number of preforms — ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 — must be produced for each variant. The blow molding team then spends time optimizing energy levels, material distribution, and blow speeds, which is why producing a sufficient number of preforms is crucial.

When brands and preform manufacturers incorporate blow molding process aids, however, they can see several significant benefits:

•  Increased Efficiencies at the Blower: By specifying these process aids, brands can help bottle blowers achieve higher efficiencies, reducing production costs and improving overall sustainability.
• Cleaner rPET Stream: Recycle-friendly process aids ensure that the bottles produced are more easily recyclable. This leads to a cleaner recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) stream, which is critical for creating high-quality recycled materials.
• Reduced Carbon Footprint: Using recycle-enabling process aids can lower the energy consumption of the bottle-blowing process, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of the entire packaging lifecycle. This aligns with growing consumer demand for environmentally responsible products.

Avient offers APR accredited process aids that can improve efficiencies, enhance recycling, and reduce energy used in the blowing process. Read more about our SmartHeat™ RHC technology for rPET and PET bottles here.

The Need for Collaboration
For the bottle manufacturing industry to fully realize the benefits of using bottle-blowing process aids, a three-party collaboration strategy is essential. Brands, preform manufacturers, and bottle blowers must work together to understand and implement these aids effectively. By fostering a strong partnership, these three stakeholders can drive significant improvements in efficiency, sustainability, and product quality.