Volume 1, Issue 1

March 2023

Research and Development India’s First R&D Centre in Container Glass Industry

AGI Greenpac Limited, Business Unit – AGI glaspac

Contents Index

Page No.

AGI’s R&D Team................................................................................................ 3 R&D Facilities.................................................................................................. 4–6 R&D Contributions.........................................................................................7, 8 One Point Lesson............................................................................................... 9

To Be The Most Preferred Partners For Our Stakeholders In Pursuit Of Value Creation.

Collaborate, Innovate, Passion, Focus & Agility.

To Partner and Promte R&D and Allied Activities For All Our Stakeholders Globally.

The first-of-its-kind R&D centre in the container glass industry has been invested in AGI Greenpac Limited (formerly known as HSIL Ltd). This is in line with the organization’s mission “to provide innovative and eco-friendly packaging solutions”, to the global market. The R&D centre is spread across approximately 3000 sq. ft. and is located in AGI Greenpac Limited, Business Unit-AGI Glaspac, Hyderabad. The R&D centre employed 3 people (see Image 1-R&D Centre Employees), with local engineers trained in India to attain professional skillsets to operate the testing facilities.

Image 1: R&D Centre Employees, Mr E.Suriya and Mr Nagasai Assisting R&D Manager Mr Ajay Joshi

With advancements in consumer needs, market trends, technology and materials, AGI’s R&D centre incorporation is an accelerated push towards the areas of innovation, improvement and introduction of breakthrough technologies, materials and products. The new R&D centre will help advance new concepts, and more sustainable glass packaging products, and will work on technologies to revolutionize glass melting and forming.

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The R&D centre is equipped with various state-of-the-art facilities such as: 1. Advanced Material Characterization (AMC) laboratory; • • • •

WD XRF for chemical analysis (see Image 2) Digital Microscope- 50X to 8000X (see image 3) Stability chamber to simulate various climatic conditions, In addition, taking support of Somany Impressa Group’s various R&D facilities such as TGA/DSC, Malvern Particle Size Analyzer, Dilatometer and Hindware Home Innovation Centre R&D.

Image 2: WD XRF Used for the Chemical Analysis of the Glass, Refractories and Raw Materials Make

Bruker

Model

S8 Tiger Series 2

X-Ray Source

75 µm Be window Rhodium (Rh) X-Ray tube with unique 4 Kw generator.

Elements Covered

Boron, Fluorine to Uranium

Standards & Certified Reference Materials (CRM)

1. Fluxana Glass CRM Standards, Quantitative-Heavy Metals, Borosilicate, Lead Silicate, Soda Lime Silica Glasses. 2. Geo Quant Advanced, Quantitative. 3. Quant Express-Stadardless, Qualitative Analysis.

Sample Types

Solids, Pellets, & Beads

Crystals

6 Crystals

Collimator Masks

28mm & 34mm

Accomplishments To Date

1. Developing testing methods through various sample preparations such as; fusion bead, press pellet, and solids for glass and raw materials. 2. Basic oxides of various glass compositions. 3. Raw Materials Analysis. 4. Heavy Metals Analysis. 5. Competitors Glass containers Analysis-Speciality Glasses, commercial glasses, coloured glasses, type 1 and lead silicate glass analysis. 4

Image 3: Olympus Digital Microscope Make

Bruker

Model

Olympus

Model Features

DSX 1000 Brightfield, Darkfield, Oblique, and Polariser Lighting Sources.

Magnification Range

50X to 8000X

Accomplishments To Date

• • • • • • •

Shiny Particles in Beer Liquid & Glass Delamination. Stones Defect Analysis for furnaces F2, F3 & F4 Shandong Vials v/s AGI Vials Analysis. Black shiny marks on Corona Beer Samples. Cord Streaks identification. Heavy Minerals identification in raw materials. Microstructure of raw materials and refractories.

This microscope is to support various business teams such as; operations, quality, marketing and others. This will be in use to identify various stone defects, glass delamination studies, fracture analysis and analyse surface coatings over glass substrates, Some beautiful images captured from this microscope are presented below.

A Silicone Stone Defect

Beer Particles

Cord Streaks 5

2. Glass Lab: For melting and annealing studies of various raw materials and studying forehearth colourants.

Image 4: Glass lab furnaces can be used for various melting and annealing analysis. 3. Sample Preparation Analysis: Machinery for grinding and polishing, planetary ball mill, pellet press, and vibratory cup mill. In addition, the R&D centre will also focus on developing unique technologies for the surface coatings such as; internal coating, dip coating, & powder spray coating.

These sample preparation machinery are used for the analysis of Chemical Compositions, Defects, Fractures and Prototype Sample Analysis. 6

Among notable contributions from the centre are: 1. In-house technical competencies on the colouring forehearth and forehearth colourants, this knowledge has helped AGI Glaspac business unit in pacing up the new colour development projects such as; Mighty Blue (clearly Canadian), Blue Sapphire (Shikar Gin, Bombay Sapphire, David Off Women), Opaque Black (Bull Dog Gin), Smokey Grey (Old Durbar, Black oak, Calvin Klein), Light Blue (SKYY Vodka), Dark Blue (Sratogga, Storm). In addition, at any given point in time, AGI glaspac can also make its forehearth colourants with the existing knowledge. This was proven with the 1-day run of the SKYY Vodka bottles produced from the in-house forehearth colourants made by AGI R&D Centre.

2. Feasibility studies of the Trona ore (Na2CO3. NaHCO3. H2O) usage in the glass batch composition through granules (130 MT) were completed successfully.

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3. Collaboration with external Institutes and third parties is as follows: a. ARCI Hyderabad, Hygratek-USA, AST-USA- To develop internal coatings for the ketchup container for easy flow. b. Vin dip, Axalta- To develop a vendor for contract manufacturing of the PVC/Thermoplastic coatings-shatter resistance. c. AGI R&D in collaboration with Feeco International Inc,USA conducted detailed study to understand processing of granules with improved and consistent quality from our fine dust.

4. Process Mapping and revamp proposal study for the granulation plant: To move towards more usage of silica fine dust and consistent quality granules. 5. Works on foundry sand, shatter resistance coatings, and slip coatings are still progressing with various challenges which in the coming days are expected to be converted into success with all your support. In addition, to the above subjects, AGI glaspac R&D Centre has been supporting various functions such as operations, quality and marketing teams with all the characterization facilities existing inhouse. A few notable accomplishments from the existing testing facilities are as follows: a. Support in characterizing the shiny particle's existence in filled beer bottles. b. Building stone defect library with a strong database to support all AGI Glaspac furnaces efficiency improvement drive. c. The in-house heavy metal analysis supporting all 5 furnaces with proper tracking. d. Building a large database of glass & associated raw materials chemical analysis to keep pace with market trends and competitors. e. In-house capability to conduct fracture analysis. f. Developing competency in analyzing a cord defect severity at AGI R&D Centre level itself. g. Advanced glass colour measuring software with the simulation capability to understand the effect of various metal ions (Co2+, Cu2+, Ni2+, Cr3+ and others).

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One Point Lesson from R&D Centre: CIEColor Values: Helmholtz Values, derived from the Young-Helmholtz Trichromatic Theory. The Helmholtz Values are known as follows: • Dominance Wavelength (DWL) in Nanometer (nm) • Purity (S) in Percentage (%) • Brightness (A) in Percentage (%) For every colour, there is a specific wavelength/spectral range which is known as the dominance wavelength (DWL), measured in nanometers (nm) from the chromaticity diagram chart. Similarly, Brightness (A) also termed by a few customers as Illuminance Transmission (%) is you illuminate (shine) the glass piece by projecting a specific light (D65 lighting source) and the amount of that light transmitting through that glass piece is calculated as Brightness percentage (%). The purity (S), also known as saturation (pure colour) measured in percentage determines if the pure colour is being altered with the addition/mixture of various colours. One would notice from the below table, commercial glass has a purity of 2.14 whereas speciality glass has 0.54. This means the commercial glass purity is altered by the various contaminants such as comparatively higher iron content of raw materials and cullet.

At std. 4mm thickness of glass piece comparison of commercial, speciality, green and amber glass.

S (%)

A (%)

570.2

2.14

84.6

Speciality Glass

573.0

0.54

88.6

AMBER

582.8

97.32

13.2

GREEN

551.7

28.47

51.4

Bottle Color

DWL (nm)

Commercial Glass

Your Feedback Matters Kindly Share Your Valuable Ideas & Feedback To– [email protected];

– [email protected];

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We Are Located At: AGI Greenpac Limited, Business Unit – AGI glaspac, Glass Factory Rd., Motinagar, Borabanda, Hyderabad, Telangana-500018, INDIA.