ADVERTISEMENT . How to advertise here

Tokyo --November 14, 2003-- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. said Friday it has developed specialized equipment for enhancing the sealing performance of plastic bottles, enabling beer makers to begin using plastics as product containers.

Mitsubishi said the equipment can coat the inner surface of a plastic bottle with a substance known as DLC, or "diamond-like carbon," making 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 equipment to Yoshino Kogyosho, a major Tokyo-based plastic bottle maker, next June.

According to Mitsubishi, Kirin Brewery Co. first developed DLC coating technology in 1995. Since then, Mitsubishi, in collaboration with Kirin and Mitsubishi Shoji Plastics Corp., has developed equipment able to coat between 12,000 and 18,000 bottles per hour, it said.

Plastic bottles account for over 50 percent of all containers used in Japan, according to Mitsubishi.

But the existing bottles are inferior to glass bottles and steel or aluminum cans in terms of resisting gas penetration and leakage.

Mitsubishi said the coating equipment can be used for not only beverage bottles but also drug and cosmetic containers.

The company expects to land 3 billion yen worth of orders for the equipment in the fiscal year beginning next April, targeting both Japanese and overseas alcoholic beverage and soft-drink makers.

Click here to view more current news articles