Husky Technologies is highlighting the company’s latest technologies, solutions, and services designed to enable the circular economy across the complete plastics lifecycle at NPE 2024 (Booth #2801).
Zhukova Valentyna Shutterstock
Orlando, Florida
“The reality is that plastics are an essential part of our daily lives. Plastics are used to protect and preserve our food, health, and well-being. They play a critical role in almost every aspect of life today, and in many cases provides life essential services in the way that other materials cannot. Materials like PET uniquely combine bio-stability, exceptional performance, superior formability, cost-effectiveness and the ability to be used over and over again in ways no other material can match. PET is one of a very small number of materials approved for use in medical devices and even for extended use inside the human body. More than 70% of medical consumables in use today utilise PET and other medical grade polymers for their production. Aluminium and glass beverage container production, releases 3-5 times the CO2 into the environment than PET container production and critically requires 3-5 times the blue water to produce. Furthermore, PET production avoids the unsustainable impacts of deforestation associated with paper composites and the environmental toll related to mining aluminium. Materials like PET are clearly the superior choice,” said John Galt, Husky’s chief executive officer.
Enabling the circular economy
As consumer demand for more recyclable packaging grows and regulations tighten, producers require innovative solutions and expert guidance to stay ahead of the curve. At the show, Husky is showcasing its range of solutions to:
- Enable sustainability through technologies developed to produce high quality packaging that is lighter weight, contains more rPET, or is made from biobased materials
- Enable growth by streamlining the adoption of manufacturing processes that facilitate speed to market and a competitive edge
- Enable innovation by leveraging solutions developed to produce attractive, safe, and sustainable packaging that out-performs alternative materials and stands out on store shelves
- Enable resilience by implementing manufacturing solutions designed to help producers adapt more quickly to continuously changing consumer demands, evolving legislations, and market trends
For the first time, Husky together with industry counterparts, is hosting an immersive circularity experience centre. The centre demonstrates the journey of a PET bottle through each stage of the recycling stream. From collecting, to washing, to grinding, to blowing, to filling, each step details how a circular end-to-end solution makes it possible for a bottle to be back on store shelves and into consumers’ hands in as little as five days.
Introducing HyPET6e – the evolution of sustainable moulding
Visitors to the Husky booth will be the first to experience the global launch of the company’s new HyPET6e injection moulding platform. The integration of machine, mould, auxiliary, and real-time remote monitoring is setting unprecedented standards in sustainable moulding, including superior rPET capability, energy efficiency, and closedloop quality control, while still delivering the lowest total production cost. Engineered to be the market’s fastest system, HyPET6e achieves the ideal balance between high throughputs and quality without compromise. Husky is running a HyPETHPP6e system at the booth, producing a lightweight 5.89g preform made from 100% rPET material. The system’s performance enables the preform to be blown into the market’s lightest, functional, industrialisable bottle.
Advancing sustainability across the plastics lifecycle
As a sustainability pioneer, Husky has been at the forefront of developing circular solutions for decades, and NPE 2024 will mark the global debut of some of the company’s most advanced sustainable technologies yet:
- At the booth Husky is running a high performance Hylectric 4.0 system with UltraShot injection technology to produce a complex bioresin part. The company is unveiling its award-winning UltraMelt technology for processing bioresins – an integral part of the system that opens new possibilities for the use of alternative renewable, bio-based materials in plastics manufacturing.
- New application design and development innovations involving lightweighting, tethered closures, and introduction of an advancement involving closures manufactured from 100% PET to facilitate mono-material packaging that streamlines the recycling process.
- The company’s remote, proactive Advantage+Elite monitoring solution will be connected to systems running at the booth, monitoring in real-time. This includes a suite of intelligent, connected solutions that use end-to-end, closed-loop reporting to leverage data and analytics, optimise operations, reduce waste, and improve overall equipment effectiveness, particularly when producing packaging containing higher percentages of recycled material.
“Make no mistake, plastics pollution is a problem. Plastics belong in the economy and out of the environment. All of us, up and down the value chain, have a role to play in solving the issue of plastics pollution. At Husky we take that obligation seriously and are committed to transitioning our industry from a linear to circular economy. At NPE 2024, we’re showcasing how the industry is working together and innovating to develop circular solutions that will preserve the environment for generations to come,” concluded Galt.