plastic bottles

For our Beyond the Bin series, Karen Cannard has been exploring recycled bottles and discovering how recycled food grade polymer from companies like Closed Loop Recycling is being used in the production of new milk bottles.  Earlier this month she met Ashwin Moorthy of the leading UK milk bottle manufacturer, Nampak Plastics, to discover more about the development of their award-winning Infini Bottle.  Over to Karen.

Having always been curious about how things are made, I welcomed the opportunity to meet Ashwin Moorthy, the Head of Engineering and Innovation at Nampak Plastics.  Nampak produces over 2 billion bottles every year and the Infini bottle is their latest development, launched in 2012.  I’ve heard some interesting things about this anything-but-ordinary bottle.  Not only has it been designed to use more recycled plastic, it has also been developed to use less plastic overall, winning amongst other accolades a National Recycling Award, a British Engineering Excellence Award and a ‘Big Tick’ as part of BITC’s Responsible Business Awards.  

Ashwin explained that Nampak’s interest in using recycled materials began in 2007 and how the company worked with Dairy Crest and Marks & Spencer to research the possibilities even before the development of  the Dairy Roadmap – a taskforce which leads on sustainability developments through the supply chain.

The partners reached an agreement to include recycled content in 2009, after which Ashwin joined the business with the immediate task of implementing recycled material at all of Nampak’s nine sites across the UK.

“In just 12 months we reached our first milestone of 10% recycled content. That was a great first step and we’ve since pushed on to develop a milk bottle that contains up to 20%.  Later this year we will reach our next goal of up to 30% recycled HDPE. The key challenge was to make a bottle that is consistent with the changing properties of the recycled polymer and further lightweighting which required a redesign of the mould to improve strength and rigidity.”

Ashwin demonstrated this change with 4pt bottles, showing the old design on the left with the more standard cuboid-like shape and a seal running vertically.  The more strengthened design to the right shows the seal of the Infini mould running diagonally.

This change in design, which has also been extended to other bottles sizes, doesn’t just allow for greater use of recycled plastic, but also enables the company to use less material overall.

“As a business, we want to reduce our use of resources.” Ashwin explained. “The key for us was also to focus on light-weighting, to use the minimal material and stretch it further. Using a 4pt milk bottle as an example, we have been able to shrink it from 40g to 32g over the last four years. That’s a 20% reduction.”

Looking closely, you can see the gradual design change in light-weighting the 4pt milk bottle, with the original 40g bottle to the left, leading to the 34g bottle and the latest 32g on the right, which features a ‘ribbed’ element to strengthen the handle.

Submitting them to a Karen Cannard squeeze test, I was surprised how much stronger the light-weighted bottles are compared to the original 40g bottle, despite using less plastic.  Compared to the former design, the range of Infini bottles has saved 16,000 tonnes of plastic and 34,000 tonnes of carbon.

The fact that such an impact can be achieved on such an ordinary object highlights the potential for engineers and designers to tap into other corners of manufacturing.

With more than one billion bottles now having been sold across the UK, the design can now be found in supermarkets such as Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Tesco and Lidl amongst others.   It’s easy to recognise, as the handle sits distinctively on the corner instead of the side.

So what’s next on Nampak’s radar?

“We’re currently working towards 50% recycled content by 2020, as part of the Dairy Roadmap,” Ashwin explained.  “Alongside this we also need to ensure that we keep the price of our bottle as low as possible, as not to impact on the cost to the dairies who are already being affected by milk prices.  As well as our packaging innovation, we are also focused on energy reduction.  We achieved our 5% target in 2014 and are aiming for a further 7.5% reduction in 2015. We’re also trialling bottle-making technology that uses 30% less energy.  Further up the line, we are analysing the energy impacts of our polymer sources.”

Naturally, I couldn’t leave without having a peek at the bottle factory itself.  And Ashwin kindly gave me a glimpse of the automated process.