(logo swooshes)
- I'm lucky enough to be here in Croatia,
because the kind folks at Elite have invited me out
to check out their water bottle factory.
And they know a thing or two about bottles,
because they've been making them since 1983.
And, well, most of us actually,
we probably take water bottles for granted, let's face it.
But today, I'm going to find out just exactly
how this is turned into this.
(mellow electronic music)
What is a bottle made from then?
Well Elite, they actually make water bottles
out of two different types of plastic here.
So a standard bottle, like the CORSA,
that's made from some of this.
Low-density polyethylene.
Now this bag itself weighs about 25 kilos,
and it can make, get this, about 400 of these bottles,
which is mind-blowing to think about it.
Talk about good use of volume.
What about those lightweight FLY bottles then?
Well Elite actually developed their very own
special compound, which took about a year's worth of time
to actually refine, in order to be used
inside of a water bottle.
More on those lightweight FLY bottles later though,
but back to these ones.
Well, first up, these pellets, they're loaded into that,
and it's pumped around into the factory,
as you can hear right now.
Let's go and check out those machines
to see just how it's done.
(smooth hip hop music)
So the pellets, they've been pumped in
to the back of the machine, and they've been heated up
to 175 degrees centigrade, and pushed forward,
before it starts to extrude, like so.
As you can see there, that's really hot.
But also really pliable, too.
So then this part of the mold moves across,
and it clamps it inside, and a load of air comes in there,
essentially blowing it into shape,
and it forms the whole bottle,
including the thread at the neck there too.
At this point, the mold also determines
the various thicknesses of the bottle.
So the side of it, as well as the base,
as well as the top, too.
'Cause obviously, you want to have a nice, solid base,
so it doesn't collapse under its own weight,
and a nice, strong neck, so that when you screw the lid on,
it's going to stay in place.
The screen here actually shows you the different thicknesses
of all those various parts.
Now it doesn't stop there, though.
Once that's actually been blow-molded into shape,
it moves along, and then the tooling phase happens.
So essentially, it's making sure that there's no rough edges
or anything like that on the top or bottom,
and also that the threads are nice and precise.
Then, it moves on to a pressure test.
So that actually tries to put some air into the bottle,
to check for any pinholes or anything like that.
If there are, the bottle's rejected and recycled,
as are any of the off-cuts that you're going to see too,
from the top and bottom of the bottles,
when they're actually being formed.
They then simply follow through on this conveyor belt,
they get ground up into little bits,
and remade into another bottle.
There's literally no waste of this whatsoever.
And this machine here can produce
about 8,000 bottles a day,
because it can come out of both sides,
and whilst one's having a process done,
the other one can slowly begin its life.
Whilst we come all the way down at the end here,
we've got a dual blow mold system,
which means that essentially,
you can fuse or blend two different materials together,
like this bottle actually in my hand,
which has got a clear stripe there,
meaning you can have a colored bottle
along with that, so you can,
well, see how much liquid you've got left out on your ride.
Speaking of colors, if you're wondering
how they get turned into these bright little beauties here,
well it's a pretty simple affair, actually.
Because remember those white polyethylene pellets
that get melted down into a bottle?
Well, you just need 1.5% of a little pigment
or a little pellet there, which is colored,
and that's enough to give you
one of those brightly colored bottles.
Right then, let's move on to the FLY bottle.
Named so because of its low weight,
and a bottle which I was first introduced to
a couple of years ago at EUROBIKE.
And believe me, I put it on the scales,
and it did in fact blow my mind.
Because this is just 54 grams,
compared to the CORSA bottle we've been
looking at previously, that's 87 grams.
So the cost per gram saving is probably one of the best ways
you can actually lose some weight on your bike.
But how do they do it?
Well firstly, it's a different manufacturing process.
And it did take about three years of the total project.
Of course, I've already mentioned,
about developing the secret formula inside of it.
They did run into a few challenges along the way.
The first one, obviously, developing the right compound,
as well as making sure it was odorless,
and importantly, nice and soft to the grip, too.
Now that secret formula compound is actually stored
up there, and dried out for a minimum of four hours,
otherwise it simply will not work.
When it's ready to be processed,
it comes down, travels along here at 220 degrees centigrade,
before then it's injected into the mold,
and then the following magic starts to happen.
The plastic used in these bottles
can be made incredibly thin
where the extra strength is not necessarily required,
such as throughout the soft grip, like on the sides,
and then beefed up where it is needed,
so the neck and the base, just like the other water bottles.
It's also pressure tested and left to cool down.
These FLY bottles actually take a little bit longer.
They take about 20 minutes.
Oh, that's that special mix of the FLY bottles.
Better not take any.
Right, okay, we've made our bottles,
but how are we going to stop the liquid
from flying out the top of it then?
Well firstly, the CORSA bottle lids,
they're still actually made in Italy.
But soon, they're going to be moving here to Croatia,
because Elite have just made a factory just next door.
But right now, the FLY bottle lids are made here.
And actually, the lid is one of the reasons
why the bottle is so light,
because it's really minimalistic.
Now this machine has a double injection mold,
and actually combines two materials within it.
So the bottom row of molds there,
that actually accepts the molten plastic if you like,
and then forms the basis of the lid.
When that's done, it rotates around,
and then this top, almost rubber-like substance
is pressed into place, and it's simply
the heat of the two make it join together.
Now there's two reasons for this.
The aesthetics, and also, this has got
a slightly grippy feel to it.
So when it gets a little bit wet,
it becomes just a little bit sticky there, too.
Now the rubber nozzle, or valve if you like,
that's actually pushed into place using a machine,
but it does require some human assistance here.
So a human actually has to line up the bottle top
underneath the machine before pressing a button
and it gets pushed into place.
Now this process, again, currently isn't here,
but in a month's time it will be,
so it's going to be an almost one-stop-does-all type facility.
Artwork.
This is the part I had literally no idea how it was done.
At first, I thought, "Oh, maybe the bottle
"is laid out flat, and then they print it,
"and then they fold it into position, I don't know."
I didn't want to ruin the surprise,
I'm here now, I'm going to find out
how they get extremely cool-looking bottles.
So this machine, extremely advanced, I've been told,
it can print up to six different layers onto a plain bottle.
Let's have a look at the process from start until finish.
Now first up, the bottles, well they're chucked
into this big container here,
and then they go up this almost escalator-type machine.
They drop down into a big sorting wheel,
then they go on to a conveyor belt.
At that point, if a bottle is not
facing in the right direction,
a laser detects it, picks it up by a little sucker,
turns it around, drops it back on the conveyor,
and it heads towards the painting machine.
The bottles are first cleaned with a brush system,
to make sure there's no dust.
And they then continue to a flame, for a split second.
This, again, makes sure the surface
is best for paint adhesion.
The paint of the graphic design is then applied,
and is then put through a UV light quickly,
to dry it before moving on to the next color.
The bottle eventually reaches a camera
that quickly scans the bottle, to make sure that, again,
it matches up perfectly with a design file,
and is precise to 0.2 of a millimeter.
If it doesn't match, it's rejected, but don't worry.
The rejected bottles are collected
and will be broken down and recycled
to be remade into a future bottle.
There is no waste whatsoever.
Sticking with recycling, you'll be pleased to know
that the bottles are made of a corn-based plastic,
as opposed to an oil-based product.
Meaning that the bottles are 100% biodegradable.
How cool is that?
But I'm not finished with artwork just yet.
Oh no, this is the latest bit of the kit.
It's about two weeks old,
and this can loosely be described I guess
as a ginormous ink jet printer.
It's full of cables and wires inside of there.
But the great advantage of this is
that very soon, consumers like you and I
will easily be able to, from the comfort of our own home,
upload our very own image or slogan, whatever,
and it get printed onto a water bottle.
Now it uses four different colors,
so cyan, magenta, yellow, and key, or black.
And each layer is printed in turn
before it simply heads on down over on the conveyor belt.
It can print up to 5,000 of those an hour.
That is simply incredible.
I love this machine.
It's like the Rolls-Royce of printing.
Right, there we are.
How water bottles are made.
I had literally no idea, now I do,
it's one I've ticked off of my list.
Let me know, though, what you would like
to see being made too.
Also, if you were going to have a picture
printed onto a water bottle, what would it be and why?
Let me know down there in the comment section.
Don't forget to like and share this video with your friends,
give it a big thumbs up.
Tell everybody about it.
Don't forget, check out the GCN shop
at shop.globalcyclingnetwork.com,
for a whole heap of goodies,
and now, to see Si, when he visited
the Elite Turbo Trainer factory, click just down here.
And well, me, I'm not go thirsty with all these, am I?
Oh, no.