Sidel puts Flex into action

(Published November 2007) French blow moulding company Sidel revealed that the basic design principle behind its NoBottle concept, which it promoted heavily in the run-up to K and was a major feature of its exhibit, is already being used in North America in Nestlé Waters’ latest Arrowhead pack.

The 500ml light weight Arrowhead bottle exploits Sidel’s Flex concept to reduce weight to just 10.7g, according to Franck Hancard, product manager for packaging and Actis coating.

“In the past when we tried to make a lighter bottle we tried to reinforce it [using ribbing] to make it stronger. But that is a nonsense, so we started to play with the memory effect of PET to make a bottle that is soft but retains its shape,” he said.

The Arrowhead bottle has a more conventional appearance than the NoBottle concept – and is heavier because it uses a conventional screw closure – but it uses the same design approach, which reduces average wall thickness to 0.12mm.

The trade-off with such lightweighting comes in barrier performance, says Sidel. Nestlé fills to 505ml to insure against content loss during its claimed 90-day shelf-life.

www.sidel.com