Petainer is a leading designer and manufacturer of preforms for many leading European brand owners. They use our expertise to create the preforms and then blow the completed containers themselves on their own premises.
Because we are also a high volume manufacturer of complete containers we can support our customers’ container blowing operations with technical assistance and consultancy. We offer customers the option of a full service contract or the supply of preforms only.
The preforms which we produce are the basis for manufacturing finished bottles ranging in size from 250 ml to 2 litres (20 gram to 48 gram) and large containers ranging in size from 5 litres to 40 litres (99 gram to 576 gram).
We can support customers with preforms for all the following markets – and more:
• Beer
• Wine
• Other alcoholic beverages
• Carbonated soft drinks
• Water
• Juices and nectars
• Food and dairy products
• Industrial
• Consumer
Manufacturing preforms
Container manufacturers such as Petainer receive PET resin in the form of small cylinders called pellets. These are melted at 270°Cand injected under high pressure into a mould to make a preform – a test tube shape that is smaller than the finished container that it will become but with thicker walls.
The preform is then reheated to around 110°C and blow-moulded into its finished form by injecting high-pressure air that forces the material into the exact shape of the water-cooled mould in which it is placed.
The two stages can be carried out on one integrated machine. More often, however, the manufacturing process uses two separate machines. The preform is injection-moulded on the first, then reheated and blow-moulded on the second machine which may be located at a bottling plant rather than on the preform manufacturer’s site.
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