Plastics Company Avoids Costly Downtime With Piping Retrofit
For Berry Global in Lawrence, KS, loss of production is not an option. The company specializes in plastic products and operates virtually 24/7. When faced with the need to replace a large portion of pipe used to transport cooling water to more than 20 injection-mold and thermoforming machines, Jacob Francis, facility maintenance supervisor at Berry Global, opted to transition the plant from carbon-steel pipe to Aquatherm polypropylene-random (PP-R) Blue Pipe®.
The existing carbon-steel piping, along with an undersized chilled-water storage tank, had to be replaced because of excessive corrosion. Cooling the molds is a critical, time-sensitive part of the injection-molding process. The plant had already incurred losses because rust and pipe scale was interfering with the cool-water flushing of the molds.