"We produce over 380 million plastic bottles annually for consumer products. There are about 20 different bottles, from 6 oz. to 60 oz. We have two PDC machines used for sleeving, purchased a year apart. We get very good tech support: whatever we need, we get immediately. I would like to convey my sincere thanks for working hard to make the delivery of the tooling and feed screws. This was an impossible task which PDC made happen. Samples were approved by the customer yesterday, and we are in production today."

“Two years ago, we replaced another tamper evident banding system with PDC equipment.   We run 800-900 jars a minute, of baby foods and juices. With the former system, tooling changeovers took an entire shift –a  whole day. Now, changeovers take just 20 minutes.  Also, the former system took 6-8 times the space to do the same work- and it was costly to keep running, because it had so many moving parts. The PDC system has very few moving parts –and it’s very user friendly. PDC did the training and set-up at the time of installation, and it performs very well. All Heinz tamper evident baby food products are done on PDC equipment.”

“We use (PDC) Model 75s to apply neckbands to our 2, 5 and 12. oz. pepper sauces. We recently bought a system – our fifth - for miniatures. The original four systems have operated since 1990. We bought them for performance, and speed; systems run 300 bottles per minute. We also wanted to keep the parts inventory interchangeable. Todd Smith, in parts, has always worked with us to get the best service life. Recently, he recommended hardened blades to cut the PETG films we need for shipments to certain countries. PETG is abrasive, and we wanted a longer service life from these movable blades, without sacrificing the stationary blades.”

“We have 4 PDC tamper-evident banding systems for ice creams. We became acquainted with PDC through the referral of a banding material supplier in 2001. We benchmarked their systems in 2001 and found they were very robust. The machines are fully mechanical –and build like tanks. And they were the only machines that could give us high speed (250/cups per minute, with an actual rating of 300 cups/minute) in what was then very limited space. On our ‘swing’ line, we run little cups to 24 ounce cups to quarts on one bander and the fact that tooling is straightforward and easy to changeover is a real benefit.”

“We installed a PDC system for our sleeved bottles several years ago. This was a new line for all of our pint products, and I wish all of our machines were made by them. The equipment was built by people who really know their machines. It’s built heavy, and the only thing you ever need to do is lubricate on schedule and change the blade – or flip it around and use the other side. We have never had to spend a bunch of money to keep it running. When you call in for a part, you always get someone who knows what they are talking about. The builder of the machine and the service techs are the same people – there’s none of that ‘he said, they said’ business. They also supplied a shrink tunnel, and an electric band oven, so that the narrow neck area of the bottle gets a little more heat for the tightest fit to the cap. When you have equipment and people that are this great, it certainly makes life easier.”

“Our PDC system applies neck bands to all of our ‘409’ cups for cultured products. We did some experimenting with their engineering team with a new idea for a captivating system – how the cups are held for neck banding – and came up with a solution that works well for our application. PDC also assisted in implementing a quality control step that would sense if the band was present and properly applied.”

“We use PDC equipment to apply 33mm to 38 mm finish PET neckbands for syrups and barbecue sauces.  This is the tamper-evident technology that Wal-Mart, a major customer of ours, prefers for their ‘Great Value’ brand products. We’ve had three of these systems for 20+ years and they just run – from 110 to 200 bottles per minute, with no issues.  Registration is not always critical, but when it is, we get great consistency.  And we get excellent service on spare parts and change parts.”

“We purchased three systems for the sleeve labeling of syrup products, which include Ghirardelli, Starbucks and our house recipes. The material is high-shrink, and registration must be perfect all of the time. Speeds are up to 200 containers per minute.We’re particularly impressed by PDC tooling – it’s robust, with big shafts and solid cores. Change parts are also easy to get – and the design is very straightforward, so you can hit it every time. A competitive system we’ve used that was purchased by a customer for a co-pack program is a ‘tinker toy’ by comparison. The downtime and changeover time is double that of the PDC tooling – and the life is half as long. We are also impressed with the customer service we get: our people even have the home and cell numbers for service people at PDC if they need immediate assistance.”

“We bought our first PDC system for tamper evident neck banding on our bottled juices – also ketchup – in 2000. The machine was re-built, so we anticipated adjustments might be needed. One thing we found was we needed a deeper perforation for the film we were using – a different knife system. PDC’s service technician came here, quickly made and implemented a solution, and we’ve been operating that line at 400 bottles per minute ever since. In about 2007, we purchased a second system – this time new equipment, a full sleever, also for bottled juices. Any time we need change parts, they arrive quickly; their technical support is excellent.”

“All of the neck shrink sleeve applications for Jim Beam – our premium and upscale products – are done on PDC equipment. They do a fine job – I bought the first system about 10 years ago for our Cincinnati plant, and we recently purchased two additional machines. People from the food and paint industries come in here to see how they operate, and the systems virtually sell themselves. A month ago, we needed change parts; we sent samples and drawings and quickly received the specified part. Their customer service is exceptional.”