However 28 years later, the new generation of consumer has grown up with an ever increasing exposure to the plastic container for even the most unlikely of products (beer, chewing gum: see last issue).

Brand owners are embracing plastic as the packaging medium of choice – even in the last bastion of high-end quality consumer packaging, the cosmetic sector, has accepted plastic - albeit a in a very heavy wall container format which retains a ‘value’ consumer perception.

With the perception shift in both brand owner and consumer, has come a corresponding shift in the market driver:

It is clear that today’s market is being driven by cost, whether that results in light-weighting to reduce materials, faster cycles, less investment cost, greater flexibility to re-tool when a product lifespan has expired.

Where the brand owners might have allowed a two year cycle from product development to store-launch, today with greater global competition brand owners have reduced their cycle to an almost immediate launch.

Possibly it is this generational shift which has led Japan’s Nissei ASB Machine Co Ltd (ASB) to global expansion with a range of bixially oriented stretch blow moulding machines tailored to a the expanding range of end-use markets. The company was founded at the birth of the launch of PET CSD bottles in 1978.

Or possibly it is the presence of the volcano smoking quietly away, overshadowing ASB’s head office plant, perched half way up mountainside, or the spectacular views overlooking Komoro, Nagano Prefecture, which has pushed ASB to break the mould of Japanese equipment manufacturers and reach beyond their own shores.

Whatever the inspiration, ASB is one of the few Japanese equipment suppliers to have embraced the changing market and gone truly global, with 12 subsidiary companies across the world – from Dubai to Dusseldorf to Atlanta to Peterbrough and Singapore.

Unusually, for Japanese manufacturers, ASB also expanded production operations opening manufacturing plants in Ambernath, India and Shanghai, China to supply domestic markets as well as components for its Komoro plant.

As a result of this global approach, ASB has an installed base of approximately 5,800 machines world wide and sales in 2004 topped US$89.5 million.

Structural Changes

The opening of the Indian and Chinese plants in 2000 ASB brought a change to the way the company served the market.

Prior to the opening of these plants, machine production was on a build-to-order basis, meaning a lead-time of between two to four months for completion (depending on the model and specifications).

Today, the PF and ASB 70 lines, are being built continuously in a more auto-assembly-line configuration. This results in ex-factory lead times having been brought down to approximately six weeks.

According to Jamie Pace, “This does tend to commoditise some of the product lines, however it also makes our equipment more competitive in the global market”

The Indian plant has a staff strength of 550 and operates 24/7. Though all of ASB’s larger ASB Series machines are still built-to-order, the component supply from its overseas plants have brought costs down.

The Bread & Butter machine

Founded on the platform of the ASB Series, the 1978 model, a conventional 4-station has undergone many iterations and the ASB 650 remains the company’s best selling model with an installed base of more than 1,000 units world wide.

The ASB series has evolved from the smallest unit running at speeds of 200 bottles per hour, up to the largest, a 40-cavity tool, which today can crank out more than 6,000 bottles hourly. ASB did, at one time, even produce a siamese-twin - now discontinued, the 32-BW was basically two machines feeding a single rotary table: a four station machine with an eight-station rotary table.

Though there is no one-size-fits-all machine the ASB series remains the most versatile, with the ASB 650 series being the top selling unit, with an installed base of more than 1,000 units world wide.

The trade-off in the process lies in the neck: with two-step machines neck limitations. The ASB series can accommodate necks up to 300mm, while the SB series can make containers from 20ml eye-drop size up to 20-25 litres for water drums.

The ASB 650 NH is a narrow neck machine, with low clamp-force, but has a fast dry cycle, the N is a wide mouth with a large neck and higher clamp force, however since there is more hydraulic oil flowing it has a slower dry cycle.

“We tend not to simply look at machine sales with the ASB 650 being the best seller.” Says Jamie Pace “We also have to look at end use market”.

By 1995, ASB was responding to the demand in the market for a more compact machine which would combine the advantages of the one-step and two-step processes, and introduced the PF Series 1 1/2step ‘cool-parison’ system, which utilises the retained heat to blow the container – a technology later incorporated into the PB series.

This reduced the machine platform, and introduced the concept of having a ratio between injection and blow.

The determining factor of injection stretch blow moulding is the cycle-time of the injection with blow taking a percentage of that time.

By operating the blow side on the cool-parison machine, at a higher ratio than the injection side, (eg; 1:2 or 1:3 or 1:4) the ASB PF series can reduce the number of blow cavities, thereby proportionately reducing the cost of the tool, which could give an 8-cavity output from a 2-cavity tool, if the blow-mould is run four times.

Aimed at narrow-neck containers from 300 ml to 10 litre with integrated handles etc.

The PB line retains the 1 ½ step concept, from resin to up to container, though with a higher output capacity of up to 10,000 bottles hourly.

Holy Grail

The HSO line is the ‘holy grail’ of hot-fill PET, mainly used in Asia for tea and coffee drinks, and drinking water.

A three blow process involving blowing an oversize container, shrinking it back to increase crystalinity and relieve stresses and then re-blow to the finished container.

In step one, the performs are heated while being rotated. Step two stretch blows the perform in a primary mould. Step three, heat sets the container using a contact method. Step four is an oven for secondary heat processing. Step five is the final blow moulding which creates the final shape, before the final ejection step.

It is a process which, according to ASB’s Jamie Pace, can achieve side-wall crystalinity of approximately 40 percent, the highest in the industry thus far, capable of accepting filling temperatures of up to 90o C.

Depending on the model, the HSO range can produce from 2,100 to 4,300 two-litre bottles hourly.

Low Cost of Entry

For emerging markets, such as India, the ASB Challenge series is a low entry cost range manufactured in both India and China. As a single-step, 4-station smaller machine.

The company also evolved by separating the product-lines into two: PM line a preform platform, and NB a re-heat blow moulding machine, to move into the 2-step arena.

12,000 moulds on file

ASB regards its business differently from the cut-throat world of injection moulding, where 50 -100 ton injection moulding machine from any one of a dozen machine manufacturers: the platen and nozzle are the same so the mould can be sourced from a standard shelf-stock, and the machine is simply a means to run a tool.

ASB approaches the business as a means to make a container to end user specifications.

Since there are various different levels of perceived capabilities within ASBs customer base in terms of mould design ASB offers additional design services “That is not to say that smaller converters don’t have design capabilities and the larger ones do, often it is the reverse – however since the end product is driven by the NMC brand owner who has a concept for shelf appeal, and typically the utility of the container is the second factor in the decision making process. Much later in a new package development is the consideration ‘Can it be made’ !” says Jamie Pace, “So ASB has two approaches; In principal what we are offering is the finished container – which is different form most other market segments which offer a bottle manufacturing platform and then third-party mould-makers are introduced to service the converter.

“While there are third-party mould makers throughout the world which have designs running on our machines, in principal, at ASB, we offer a turnkey solution; the finished container.” Although the core product offered to the customer is the machine and its tools, this is designed to make a container to the correct specifications, shape, tolerances, fill and pressure specifications etc.

Alternatively the established brand owner, looking for shelf differentiation to refresh the product image in a market of cloned containers.

ASB has container designers in its various offices around the world, who will work with the brand owner to design from scratch or from existing specs provided. These designers have the ability to draw on the database of intellectual property accumulated by ASB in the production of more than 12,000 different moulds to enable them, wherever the location. Jamie Pace; “We have to respond to a customer’s specific design requirements when he says ‘We want a neck like this, body shape like this, and its got to hold 10 bars of pressure” the designer can create it, or suggest modifications to factor running speeds and ultimately cost implications”.

A clear example of this was the development of the oval container for sauces, toppings and mustards, where the brand owner requirement was for the maximum amount of real-estate on the front of the container for the label, while the functionality and squeezability of the more traditional but standard container, is not compromised the brand owner obtains more shelf presence at point of sale, visibility and therefore higher sales – which it the function of the container maker.