BMT, a strategic technology partner for the packaging industry, is set to unveil its latest hardware innovations - Blowscan and Thermoscan - at Drinktec 2025. These advanced lab tools are designed to help manufacturers optimise PET bottle production, particularly as the industry shifts towards increased use of recycled PET (rPET) and other sustainable materials. By providing precise, data-driven insights into material behaviour and process conditions, BMT aims to support brands and manufacturers in achieving greater sustainability, reducing waste, and improving overall bottle performance.
Blowscan: accelerating innovation in stretch blow moulding
As the packaging sector intensifies its focus on recycled content, understanding the behaviour of rPET and bio-polymers during stretch blow moulding (SBM) becomes crucial. These materials often exhibit unpredictable characteristics, making it challenging to ensure consistent bottle quality. Blowscan, BMT’s lab-based, single-cavity SBM platform, addresses this challenge by delivering deep insights into material performance, preform quality, and bottle development - without interrupting production lines.
Blowscan features a modular design that allows users to switch between free-blow and mould-blow modes. In free-blow mode, materials are stretched without mould constraints, enabling effective benchmarking of new or recycled materials. The mould-blow mode supports rapid prototyping and validation of new bottle geometries, allowing for quick iteration during early design stages. This flexibility can improve material validation rates by up to 20%.
The system utilises a batch-fed preform approach, eliminating the need for conveyors or hoppers, and employs infrared heating to replicate industrial conditions. Blowscan captures critical data such as preform temperature, inflation pressure, and blow geometry, facilitating robust comparisons across materials and machine setups. This empowers R&D teams to de-risk early-stage development and optimise processes for site-specific requirements.
Thermoscan: precision thermal profiling for consistent quality
Transitioning to rPET introduces thermal variability and inconsistent bottle performance, as recycled materials behave differently from virgin PET (vPET). Traditional process adjustments, such as altering oven power, often rely on trial and error, leading to inefficiencies. Thermoscan, BMT’s lab-based thermal imaging system, provides high-fidelity temperature data for both preforms and bottles. By capturing the temperature profile of a successful vPET run, teams can set accurate starting points for rPET processing and use Thermoscan to fine-tune heated preforms.
This data-driven approach reduces reliance on guesswork, narrows process windows, and accelerates setup times. Thermoscan enables benchmarking of thermal behaviour across different materials and machines, cutting profiling time by up to 30%. The result is more consistent bottle quality, improved operational efficiency, and enhanced sustainability outcomes.
The BMT Way: integrating data, hardware, and expertise
Beyond individual tools, BMT introduces the BMT Way - a collaborative workflow that integrates hardware, data, and technical expertise to streamline bottle development from concept to production. This structured approach starts with capturing real-world material behaviour using Blowscan and Thermoscan, generating high-resolution thermal and process data at every stage.
The collected data is then translated into virtual models, enabling faster and more informed design iterations. By digitising this information, teams can virtually explore design, material, and process interactions, validate concepts with confidence, and reduce dependency on trial-and-error methods. Insights are fed back into production through targeted process adjustments and quality frameworks, ensuring consistency and accelerating time-to-market.
This closed-loop system distinguishes the BMT Way from fragmented or isolated lab tools, helping teams deliver high-performing bottles efficiently and reliably. BMT’s presence at Drinktec offers industry professionals the opportunity to witness these innovations first-hand and engage with experts on the future of PET packaging.
