Brewer Chooses Quick-Change Flexibility to Blow Wide Range of PET Beer Bottles

Operating in Moldova since1906, Beermaster Brewery was frustrated with its two semiautomatic PET stretch-blow molders equipped with seven blow molds and a maximum capacity of 4,000 bottles per hour (bph). Frequent production halts, time-consuming mold changes among multiple bottle sizes and inconsistent operation of the older equipment often led to delays in meeting demand for its beers, cider, kvass and other beverages. It solved all these problems with the purchase of one machine, an APF-Max 4L from PET Technologies in Austria.

This all-electric, linear two-stage machine can blow bottles from 0.2 to 3 L with an output of 7,000 bph — and up to 8,000 bph for 0.5 L bottles. Especially important to Beermaster is its ability to change molds in as little as 20 minutes. Beermaster today produces five different bottle sizes on this machine: 0.5 L, 1 L, 1.5 L, 2 L and a popular 3 L size. Depending on production requirements, Beermaster may change molds several times a day. Also, the machine can also handle heavy preforms needed for PET bottles that resemble beer kegs.

The APF-Max machines (a new model of which was introduced at NPE2024) are described as “universal” due to their flexibility and adaptability. They also feature NIR heating — said to provide 20% overall energy savings compared with conventional IR heating — as well as air recovery systems and preferential heating.