“The K is where we launch the majority of our products,” said Jamie Pace, VP and general manager of Nissei ASB Company, the Atlanta, GA-based subsidiary of Japan’s Nissei ASB (Stand 14B38), and this show is no exception, with two new machines on the company’s stand. The first, called the HSB-6M, is running 15 minutes of every hour at the K with an output of about 5800 PET jars/hr. “With this machine we’re targeting glass replacement,” he added, citing applications such as jam and marmalade jars and pickle jars as prime opportunities.

Pace isn’t alone in seeing the potential, with the machine at the stand, the first in the range ever made, already sold to an unidentified processor in Europe. With its three-step process, bottles are blown and then heat set so that filling temperatures as high as 90°-95°C are possible. The HSB-6M shares a lot of technology with the company’s established smaller models of the same nomenclature for narrow-neck packaging, of which 70 have already been placed in the market.

Also new, and also sold, is the ASB-150DPW, used for injection blowmolding of smaller packages such as those used for hotel amenities. The K is the first tradeshow appearance of the machine, though two were sold at an open house in Atlanta a few weeks ago, Pace said. With 150 tons’ of clamp force, the new model is twice the size of the manufacturer’s established one for these applications, with twice the capacity as well. The older model was introduced at the NPE tradeshow in 2003 and has only a single row of cavities; about 50 of these have been sold since then, most in North America.

Although the machine isn’t here in Düsseldorf, a third technology highlighted here is the company’s system for blowmolding 5-gallon PET water containers. Heat set, these can be rinsed on the same equipment currently used for polycarbonate containers in this application. “We’ve long offered these (machines) for PC; with an add-on, a PC machine can now be converted to PET.”

Pace said the company closed its last fiscal year in September exceeding its goals globally and also in North America.