RETAL's Sustainability Director Emmanuel Duffaut appreciates how this software adds an extra feather in the cap of the group's ambitious aims to reduce and mitigate its environmental impact, which includes the use of renewable energy, energy efficiency, products light-weighing, waste management and use of recycled PET and bio-based materials. Duffaut says, “We only invest when there is both a technical and an environmental benefit; the Dassault Systemes software brings advantages in both areas. By allowing advanced tests that make a physical prototype unnecessary, we can save all the production associated with the prototype, so it's a very resource-efficient solution, for us, our customers, and the environment.”

Another sustainable advantage that the Dassault Systemes suite offers RETAL is its ability to create precise information regarding performance relating to the distribution of the thickness and stretch ratio of the bottles without needing to produce a physical product, helping to create even lighter preforms. This hot topic of light weighing is crucial to the future success of the packaging industry, with lighter preforms meaning less draw on oil feedstocks. Duffaut notes, “Our design team worked together with our global beverage brand customer to create a lighter preform. Working together right from the start meant that every element of the project was focused on the solution they needed. The customer explained to us how their current 5l container needed to evolve; they wanted a PET container that was 20 percent larger and so the preform used to make a new bottle had to be 15 percent lighter.”

Strong and sustainable

Buinovskis and the RETAL R&D team harnessed the Dassault Systemes' CATIA and ABAQUS software and the newly developed plug-ins to rise to the challenge. He says, “Having advanced 3D modeling software, preform, and bottle design is a relatively fast and easy task. Without years of relevant experience, it is difficult to predict if a new preform or new bottle design will be successful. But with the global trend of light-weighting, empirical methods of design quickly become outdated. That is why we had to use simulation for this project.”

RETAL took the original container and reverse-engineered it. The initial plan was to apply a lighter neck type and introduce minimal adjustments to existing bottle design. Buinovskis explains, “However, our simulations showed that bottle performance would not be satisfactory. This led to a decision to redesign a bottle completely, allowing us to match new preform and bottle geometries in the most optimal way. Stretch-blow molding simulation confirmed that it was possible to produce a newly designed bottle using a new preform. While top-load and drop-test simulations showed much better bottle performance compared to previous designs, which later was confirmed by laboratory tests performed on our newly produced bottles. Dassault Systemes’ CATIA and ABAQUS are powerful tools that save considerable time and money associated with prototyping.”

RETAL is delighted to highlight how working with the Dassault Systemes suite of CAD and simulation software has brought an extra sustainability dimension to its design capabilities, with sustainability at the heart of its investment.