Last month's Drinktec was the catalyst for the sales of the first Kosme blowmoulder to a UK mineral water company.

Richard Portman, Managing Director of Kosme UK said "At this years show, Kosme synchro-bloced a 6 cavity blowmoulder to a Kosme 50 valve filler / 10 head capper. Our UK customer was so impressed with the quality of the Kosme unit that he placed an order at the show, the machine is being built now and is due for delivery in mid January, which will be in good time for the spring and summer next year".

The Kosme blowmoulders have benefited considerably from the Krones Contiform technology. Kosme's parent company has supplied many of the key components to the Austrian based company. This has enabled Kosme Austria to develop a range of blowmoulders that are significantly less expensive to operate.
Designed for the small to medium sized operator, the Kosme range starts with a 2 cavity machine, with 3, 4 and 6 cavity machines available that can operate up to 2,000 bottles per hour per cavity.

A typical Kosme client may well be in a remote part of the countryside close to the source of their water. It is often the case that a geographically remote site does not have a large enough electrical power supply and it is
extremely expensive to bring in additional power requirements. The Kosme blowmoulders have a patented oven heating technology system that uses up to 40% less power than any other system available on the market. This power saving can be the difference between being able to blow one’s own bottles on site and not, with the ongoing cost advantage of the huge operational power savings during the blowmoulder’s operational life. To further assist bottlers as they strive to keep energy usage to a minimum, Kosme have developed a patented air recovery system, this can save up to 50% in air usage, which greatly assists the smaller bottler to keep their products competitive.

As the PET market starts its fourth decade supplying primary packaging to the mineral water, soft drinks and beer markets bottle design is even more important to the success of a brand. At Kosme Austria, they have a dedicated team that can develop a bespoke bottle design that is both eye catching and cost effective. A lot of money can be wasted, where a design can use too much PET material.

Richard Portman concluded "Now that Kosme Austria is benefiting from the R & D inputs from Krones, we have a series of blowmoulders that are well designed, engineered to a very high standard, that are not overly
complicated to run. Often our customers are just making that first step into blowmoulding and therefore do not have the experience of bottle manufacturing. Our aim has been to keep the functionality as simple as
possible so that our clients do not need to take on additional staff to run the blowmoulders. For those customers who are new to blowmoulding, we can provide a full training programme at the factory in Austria, where they will be trained on 'their' machine. Following installation in the UK, our team of five service engineers are on call to assist with any difficulties and of course routine maintenance."

Kosme UK keep a full inventory of spare parts in the UK, to support this first blowmoulder installation and others in the future. The Kosme UK service engineers have all received training on the blowmoulders in the Kosme Austria facility.