Developed in conjunction with Pont Europe, a pan-European distributor of plastic bottles and jars, based in London, the ‘Pont pack’ had to be less than 25mm deep in order to fit the parameters of standard letter size. At the same time, the neck opening needed to be as big as possible to ensure ease of filling.
According to RPC Design, this dimension was technically challenging because the pack shape is outside conventional blow tolerances.
‘Ordinarily, the ratio of width to depth needs to be 2.5:1 to allow the shape to be blown with optimum material distribution, but that would not suit the letterbox size required by Pont,’ said Jim Dale, RPC’s design manager.
‘Our technical team worked hard to ensure that this concept with a width to depth ratio of over 4:1 is viable, with the creation of pilot tooling to manufacture a workable prototype.’
RPC Market Rasen manufactured the blow-moulded HDPE bottle as well as managing the overall project.
‘The team at RPC Market Rasen worked hard to bring together many elements to make the pack a success,’ said Philip Lindsay, sales and marketing manager, RPC Market Rasen.
‘Elements included non-round trepanning of the neck to maximise the aperture, maintaining consistently flat side panels, and combining this with strength in the corners to allow quality wrap-around labelling.’
RPC Halstead moulded the matching oblong cap in polypropylene. Once filled, the oblong bottleneck was induction sealed for air-tightness and tamper-evidence.
‘We are absolutely delighted that RPC’s ingenuity and expertise has achieved the impossible,’ said Max van de Grift, supply chain director of Pont Europe.
