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Award for Gaplast
The South-German packaging-specialist Gaplast is one of the recipients of a DuPont Packaging Award 2008. The company’s patented Bag-in Bottle technology, for the manufacture of disinfectant bottles with a capacity of 1000 ml. and airless functionality (see picture 1), succeeded against almost 80 entries from Europe, America and Asia. According to the jury, principal reasons for its selection were the responsible deployment of resources and optimised energy usage during production. Roland Kneer, proprietor and managing director at Gaplast, along with Stephan Kneer, technical manager, accepted the award on the company’s behalf during a ceremony held at DuPont headquarters (Wilmington, Delaware, US) on 17th April 2008.
Typically, bottles used when cleaning laboratory work-surfaces, for instance, are expensively assembled from four separately-produced components. For example, the film-based inner-bag required for airless functionality – the bag collapses on itself, restricting air entry – would normally be inserted by hand in the blow-moulded bottle, and then welded to the bottle and other injection-moulded sealing elements.
The Bag-in-Bottle system developed by Gaplast, on the other hand, is manufactured using co-extrusion blow-moulding, whereby the bottle, bag and seals are created in a single process. In addition, the technology enables the automated filling and screw-fixation of the airless pump. Overall, energy savings of up to 50 percent have been achieved, as well as efficiency increases of up to 60 percent. A further factor in the success of the system has been the specification of DuPont™ Surlyn® for the inner-bag, the wall thickness of which is only between 100 and 200 µm. The soft and chemically-resistant packaging polymer can be processed together with the outer-casing made from polypropylene, yet will detach itself easily during use.
A further sustainable benefit of the 1000 ml. bottle from Gaplast is its minimised material consumption. On the one hand, the combination of optimal design and material selection permits low wall thicknesses for the bottle and bag, while on the other, the fully-automated, precise filling of the pump minimises bottle size, because there is no need to counterbalance filling fluctuations. As a result there are lower material and transportation costs, as well as a reduced impact on the environment during disposal of the product. Moreover, the fact that polypropylene and Surlyn® are from the same polymer family further facilitates recycling.
“We are very proud of this award,” says Roland Kneer, who established the family-run company in 1989, “because it recognises not only the many years of development work invested in our extremely popular Bag-in-Bottle concept, but also our dedication to create sustainable solutions with regard to the production and lifecycle of our products.”
Gaplast is an internationally-operative family business with over 95 employees, which is among the most innovative companies in the area of research and development of polymer systems for pharmaceuticals, medical technology and cosmetics. Its headquarters and production facilities are located in Saulgrub-Altenau near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, where seventy different machines are used for injection moulding, injection blow moulding, extrusion blow moulding, coextrusion blow moulding, assembly and quality control. Gaplast has been accredited with the DIN EN ISO 9001 standard since 1994.
