Tethered caps in the beverage sector: new solutions for effective in-line quality control

The EU regulations for tethered caps will take effect in July 2024, and Antares Vision Group has a solution to inspect caps with high accuracy, ensuring compliance without interrupting operations.  

Directive 2019/904 of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union introduced new cap requirements. It stipulates that all caps must remain attached to containers after they have been opened to prevent plastic from entering the environment and to promote recycling in tandem with the containers.

New challenges for beverage companies

The introduction of tethered caps presents several new challenges for beverage companies. They must redesign their bottles and caps to ensure the caps remain attached after opening, requiring new molds and production processes. Additionally, they must select durable yet flexible materials to maintain product integrity and usability. Ensuring compliance with regulatory standards and conducting rigorous quality control tests are also crucial steps. 

In response to these challenges, the Antares Vision Group, empowered by FT System technology, offers tethered cap inspection solutions for existing and new production lines.

Which types of tethered caps can Antares Vision Group machines inspect?  

Different types of tethered caps have other features, which makes the inspection stage even more challenging and important. For example, carbonated beverages use screw caps, and flat beverages use press-on caps. We have solutions suitable for both, and the flexibility of our systems allows us to adapt our controls to the needs of different types of closures.  

In addition to their inspection systems, bottlers will have to analyze the impact the tethered caps have on their entire line, including application systems. A distinctive feature of the solutions is their ability to control the upstream process in addition to ensuring quality. For example, they monitor individual filling valves and individual capping heads and correlate product waste to a specific capping head. This allows the manufacturer to perform preventive maintenance and optimize the efficiency of their capping systems.  

Furthermore, our solutions make it possible to continue performing quality control on PET cap-preform coupling and torque measurement using ROBO-QCS the automated robotic system on the line. ROBO-QCS automatically performs multiple quality controls on the line, simultaneously picking up and depositing a bottle directly on the belt at full line speed. We can also integrate application angle into tethered cap inspection. This ensures the correct closure between the cap and bottle. 

How does the Antares Vision Group inspection solution work?

Collaborating with major cap manufacturers has always been crucial to Antares Vision Group. Thanks to these strong relationships, we can anticipate proposed changes to tethered caps and continue to evolve and improve our solutions. We can study new features and confirm whether our inspection systems are capable as-is or need to be adapted.  

A significant challenge with tethered caps is minimizing false rejects. With complete accuracy, our solution recognizes actual rejects; it does not reject a bottle because of the space between the lid and the tamper-evidence band that is characteristic of tethered caps. We can also inspect symmetrical and asymmetrical caps with a protruding hinge that deviates from the usual rotation symmetry. All this is possible because we deploy up to five cameras — four for side views around the cap and one for a top-down view — and dedicated illumination systems to achieve a clear contour inspection of the tethered caps, especially the tamper-evidence band. Integrating the application angle guarantees complete closure detection via the correct alignment of caps with bottles.  

Discover our inspection solution