around the globe

02/2014

SIPA helps PONTI add a touch of class to its GLAZES

Here’s one for the foodies. With its gastronomic glazes, Ponti —the most famous Italian producer of vinegar, pickles, condiments and sauces— offers intense sweet and sour flavours in a dense liquid that merges modernity and heritage and which is just dying to bring all sorts of dishes to life.
Ponti has been using SIPA SFR rotary stretch-blow molding machines for a few years now to produce 1-L PET bottles for various wine vinegars. Last year, it took its first linear unit, an SFL 4/4, to produce a new design of small bottles for its Gastronomic Glazes.

The Ponti Gastronomic Glazes have been on the market for a while, but they were originally bottled in high density polyethylene. The new PET versions were launched earlier this year with an extensive publicity campaign on Italian TV. They have a personalized and more attractive look, both in terms of their shape and also because the bottles have a beautiful shine that shows the contents in their best light.

Ponti now offers five different Gastronomic Glazes: the original, based on Aceto Balsamico di Modena IGP, has now been joined by four more: one containing Moscato grape must; another with soy sauce; a third with lemon juice; and the final one with apple juice.
The PET bottles come in two squeezable sizes, holding around 145 or 250 g of product, for each flavour. The bottles themselves weigh 14.5 g.

SIPA provided Ponti with a fully comprehensive package deal. Not only did it supply the processing equipment, it also produced original designs and prototypes, carried out product testing and offered other complementary services.
SIPA has a well-proven capability to develop and prototype new bottle designs for its customers. It has partnered with numerous customers, around the world and across various sectors, to develop containers with innovative features that exploit the potential of PET to its maximum. In its prototyping operations, SIPA can produce original new preforms and containers, optimize existing preforms and containers and develop and test containers using different PET resins. The company’s test laboratory, equipped with 16 laboratory machines, is certified by leading brand owners in the food and drink industry.

The new bottles are relatively simple to blow, but particular attention did have to be paid to the bases to make sure they are oriented correctly during the high-speed filling and labelling operation; this is because they have a slightly oval cross section, so the label has to be in exactly the right position.
Attention also had to be paid to how the bases behaved during filling. One particular feature of the bottles is that they have a champagne bottle-style base, higher at the center than around the rim. In early trials, with the bottles still hot from the stretch-blow operation as they were filled, the internal pressure of up to 35 bar tended to flatten out the bases. SIPA optimized the blowing sequence so that the bases were cool enough by the time they were filled to resist the filling pressure and retain their shape.

Tests carried out in the SIPA laboratory included standard checks on dimensions and top load strength. In addition, controls were carried out to ensure that the bottles retain their oval shape over time. The Ponti Gastronomic Glaze, being based on wine vinegar, tends to absorb oxygen, creating a partial vacuum in the still-unopened bottle, and providing the potential to distort its shape. However, even after a year, there was no discernable change.
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