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Extrusion blow moulding (EBM)
The extrusion blow moulding process is used to manufacture bottles and packaging for cosmetics, personal care, household care, detergents, food, and oils and lubricants. A tubular preform is extruded and then moulded to the inner contours of a mould using pressure. Surplus material on the bottle – what’s known as flash – is then trimmed off and reprocessed.
Injection stretch blow moulding (ISBM)
ALPLA primarily follows a two-step procedure for the production of PET bottles. Firstly, preforms are produced by means of injection moulding. In the second step known as stretch blow moulding (SBM), the preforms are heated up in the separate stretch blow moulding machine and are simultaneously stretched and blown into a bottle shape in the mould with the aid of a stretching rod.
At certain sites, ALPLA also uses the one-step PET process. Here, the production of the preform and the stretch blow moulding of the bottle are combined within a single machine. ALPLA produces PET bottles and containers for cosmetics, personal care, household care, detergents, and food and beverages.
Injection moulding (IM)
Injection moulding is one of the principal procedures for producing moulded plastic parts. Here, plastic mass is injected into a mould and cooled. There is a virtually unlimited choice of shapes and surfaces available. ALPLA uses this technology primarily to produce individual components and caps. PS, PP and PE are the plastic materials used.
Injection blow moulding (IBM)
This is a process in which both the preform injection and the blow moulding of the product are performed one after the other on the same machine. It differs to ISBM in that no stretching rod is used – the preform is only blown into the bottle or can shape. ALPLA uses this method at certain sites to produce smaller containers with high quality requirements out of PE and PP for cosmetics, personal care and pharma products.
Recycled PET and PE
ALPLA operates a number of its own recycling plants. There, cutting-edge technologies are used to turn PET bottles into high-grade PET pellets which are used primarily for the production of food packaging and food bottles. Likewise, used HDPE bottles are turned into new non-food-grade rHDPE pellets at the plants, which are then used to produce new bottles by means of extrusion blow moulding.
