Soft drinks, fruit juices and mineral water: they can all be packaged practically and easily in PET bottles. Once the bottles are empty, they are disposed of and can be either recycled or burned with other residual wastes. Their uses are practical, yet their fabrication is complex and challenging. BALINIT coatings from Oerlikon Balzers establish the prerequisites for efficient production.
The victory march of PET bottles began about 30 years ago. They get their name from the polyethylene terephtalate of which they are made. This material’s formability is the foundation for a production process whose first step entails the fabrication of a blank known as a “preform”. In the second step, the blank is put into a production machine where the stretch blow molding method is used to form it into the shape of a bottle.
PET bottles have today become commonplace. Just as with many other items in the consumer goods sector, however, they too are subject to high cost pressure. Consequently, their production must be streamlined to make it as efficient as possible. Likewise their recycling must be done consequently, for example through deposit systems.
