Conclusion of Italian Competition Authority Abuse of Dominant Position Proceedings - plastic molding services

ENGEL will present solutions including a mould that can process different labels at the same time at K 2022 in Dusseldorf, running from the 19th to the 26th of October.

"The Novo Holdings team brings deep knowledge of the biopharmaceutical market, including biomanufacturing, a key growth area for Oxford Nanopore," he said.

Novo Holdings, which has €149 billion under management, has made the investment after evaluating the long-term growth opportunities for Oxford Nanopore, in particular those within the Biopharma industry, and after a thorough review of its broad patent portfolio, Oxford Nanopore said.

According to the companies, an ENGEL e-speed injection moulding machine with a newly-developed and extremely powerful injection unit is being used to produce the thin-walled containers produced from recycled PET in a single step.

The commitment from Novo forms part of an equity issue from Oxford Nanopore to raise a total of around £75 million by issuing shares at 120p each.

Novo has committed to subscribe for shares worth up to £60 million, while there will also be a placing to institutional investors via an accelerated bookbuild. The Novo subscription may be reduced in part by amounts raised under the placing.

The dyes used on in-mould labels for the American market can apparently be washed off before recycling, while ENGEL says that for the European market, the in-mould label floats off in the recycling process to allow for the dyes and the label to be separated from the PET.

The companies say that up until now, it has only been possible to process PET in thick-walled parts such as bottle preforms in injection moulding. The final packaging format was apparently created in a second step of the process, for example, by blow moulding.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies has announced a strategic investment of up to £60 million from Novo Holdings - one of the world's top life sciences investors - which says the former's platform is being evaluated by top Biopharma manufacturing companies.

Giles Gwinnett is a writer at The Business Magazine. He has been a journalist for more than 20 years and covered a vast array of topics at a range of media settings - in print and online. After his NCTJ newspaper training, he became a reporter in Hampshire before moving to a news agency in Gloucestershire. In recent years, he has been covering the financial markets along with company news for an investor-focused web portal. His many interests include politics, energy and the environment. He lives in Dorset.

It reinforces and validates the firm's strategy and future growth plans across each of its end markets, including life sciences research tools, clinical and applied industrial, it added.

The companies add that the transparent, round containers feature a wall thickness of 0.32 and a volume of 125 ml. The containers are reportedly ready-for-filling as soon as they leave the production cell thanks to integrated in-mould labelling (IML).

To process rPET, ENGEL adds that it combines the new injection unit with a plasticising unit from in-house development and production specifically designed for processing recycled material. During the plasticising and injection, the viscosity of the PET is configured for thin-wall injection moulding.

"This investment underscores our belief in Oxford Nanopore's platform and its expanding opportunity in biopharmaceuticals, where rapid sequencing, richer data and a streamlined platform can support discovery and delivery of new drug therapies.

ENGEL, ALPLA Group, Brink and IPB Printing have collaborated to produce thin-walled containers made of PET and rPET in a single injection moulding process step.

"We are confident in Oxford Nanopore's long-term value proposition after extensive due diligence within the biopharma community and analysis of their robust and extensive IP portfolio, and we look forward to supporting the company going forward."

The modified rPET being processed at the K show comes from drinks bottles recycled in the plants of packaging and recycling specialists ALPLA Group, who are headquartered in Hard, Austria. The other collaborators involved with the project will also be at K 2022. This includes Brink (Harskamp, Netherlands) for the mould and IML automation and IPB Printing (Reusel, Netherlands) for the labels.

"Oxford Nanopore has made impressive ongoing progress to advance its technology platform and gain commercial traction," said Dr Daniel Mahony, senior partner of growth investments at Novo Holdings in a stock market release.

ENGEL says that it specifically developed the e-speed 280/50 injection moulding machine with its electrical clamping unit and hydraulic injection unit for the high-performance requirements of thin-wall injection moulding. The new injection unit allegedly achieves injection speeds of up to 1400 mm per second at a maximum injection pressure of up to 2600 bar when processing small shot weights with an extreme wall-thickness to flow path ratio

PET offers the benefit of having a closed-loop recycling system already in place, the companies claim. They add that the innovation could remove the need to downcycle packaging into products other than bottles and provides an opportunity for bottle-to-bottle, bottle-to-cup, or even cup-to-bottle recycling.