 vitaqua three good reasons to choose sacmifive caps production lines now installed in vitaqua gmbh, breunaguaranteed quality standards, outstanding productivity, optimisation of energy consumption three key characteristics of sacmi&rsquos continuous compression moulding ccm solutions for caps production that german bottler vitaqua decided were vital to the completion of its megaplant at breuna, in the kassel region in germany.motivated by a need to bring cap manufacturing under internal control &ndash to set up personalised solutions that meet their specific manufacturing requirements &ndash the german company soon identified the sacmi&rsquos complete line as the perfect tool with which to achieve its goals.the five installed lines manufacture caps with a diameter of 28 mm standard 1881 and a weight of about 2 grams, with perline output rates of approximately 1,500 pcsmin. successful testing of the first production line showed that madeinsacmi compression technology provided the ideal solution in terms of both competitiveness and costbenefit ratios vitaqua&rsquos technical staff were so impressed that they quickly confirmed the purchase of further 4 manufacturing lines.most significantly, as mr. reinhold juelg, r&d manager at vitaqua, points out, &ldquothe advantages associated with this technology, compared to injection, allow us to work at lower extrusion temperatures with significant energy savings&rdquo. for vitaqua, that advantage is enhanced by the fact that water cooling flow rate temperature is in the range of 2025 °c, meaning, according to juelg words, that &ldquothe water in the circuit only needs cooling in the summer months&rdquo.in the opinion of the german technicians it&rsquos also and above all the dimensional repeatability of the cap that makes the difference. &ldquosacmi technology&rdquo, highlights the vitaqua r&d manager, &ldquoused in conjunction with the correct masterbatch, minimises waste and gives the line excellent overall efficiency on the basis of random testing effected on a 10hour production run, 900.000 caps were produced and only 35 faulty ones rejected.average cap weight is remarkably consistent. in the bottling line, since the caps production equipment has gone online, the percentage of bottles with caps incorrectly applied due to dimensional variations has dropped from up to 0.5 to below 0.02&rdquo. &ldquothat was one of the decisive criteria&rdquo, says mr. juelg.thanks also to the customer&rsquos faith in the project, great results have been achieved in terms of feedback and availability since the installation of the caps production lines the number of complaints received from all the three german plants belonging to the beverage group since startup in march 2013 till today was reduced to zero.last but not least, the enhanced output flexibility provided by sacmi technology, with colour change time in less than 10 minutes and minimisation of associated waste material, meets another key need solutions flexibility shared by all the world&rsquos major bottling players.
