Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. has found a way to enhance the sealing performance of plastic, allowing beer makers to reduce their need for aluminum cans and create new kinds of product containers.
Mitsubishi said the equipment coats the inner surface of a plastic bottle with a substance known as DLC, or "diamond-like carbon," which makes the bottle more than 10 times as resistant to oxygen penetration or carbon dioxide leakage.
As a result, the beverage inside the bottle oxidizes more slowly and can be preserved longer, the company said.
Mitsubishi said it plans to deliver its first model of the DLC coating machine to Yoshino Kogyosho, a major Tokyo-based plastic bottle maker, next June.
Kirin Brewery Co. first developed DLC coating technology in 1995, Mitsubishi said. Since then, Mitsubishi, in collaboration with Kirin and Mitsubishi Shoji Plastics Corp., has developed equipment that can coat between 12,000 and 18,000 bottles per hour, it said.
Plastic bottles account for more than 50 percent of all containers in Japan, according to Mitsubishi. But the existing bottles are inferior to glass, steel or aluminum in terms of resisting gas penetration and leakage.
Mitsubishi said the new equipment can be used to make drug and cosmetics containers as well.
The company said it plans to target both Japanese and overseas makers of soft drinks and alcoholic beverages and expects to land 3 billion yen worth of orders for the new machine next fiscal year.