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At the recent NPE2024 trade show in Orlando, Florida, of Belgium (U.S. office in Norcross, Georgia) introduced a new approach to plastic pails for paints and other solvent-based products. The concept was developed in South Africa by a consortium, including packaging molder Pailpac, Topline Tooling, digital printing specialist Shift-ID and Delta Engineering which contributed plasma coating technology.

As explained by Danny De Bruyn, Delta Engineering managing director, the novelty of this approach starts with injection molding the pail, lid and handle of HDPE rather than the currently used polypropylene (PP), which can become brittle at low temperatures and break when dropped. The next innovation is plasma coating the inside of the pails and lids as a barrier to solvent migration, which preserves paint shelf life and prevents contamination of the high-density polyethylene (HDPE) for recycling. Another benefit is more complete emptying of the pails, because paint sticks less to the coating. Delta is awaiting patents on a new version of its organic, fluorine-free coating and is testing coated pails of 100% nonfood-grade postconsumer recycled (PCR) for possible food-contact suitability.

Also new is patent-pending digital printing technology from , which De Bruyn says is affordable and requires little skill to operate. It’s said to match in-mold labeling (IML) quality without the need for a label substrate film and no addition to injection molding cycle time for label insertion. No stock of printed labels is required, and no waste from obsolete labels. Print designs can be changed virtually instantaneously with virtually zero waste or rejects. An antistatic coating is sprayed onto the pail after printing for explosion-proofing. All the processes of molding, coating and printing can be combined into an integrated inline system.