PETpla.net Insider 06 / 2019

14 PET planet Insider Vol. 20 No. 06/19 www.petpla.net JUBILEE 2001 Hochwald-Sprudel and Adelholzener both decided to try cold aseptic filling. Hochwald went for a 14,000 bph KHS line while Adel- holzener opted for a Krones line run- ning at 16,000 bph. In issue 8 Sipa presented the Bairocade spray-on barrier coating solution. This had been developed by PPG of Pittsburg. Just a few pages later various other coating systems available at the time were covered: DLC from Nissei ASB, Actis from Sidel, BestPET from Krones, and Glaskin from Tetra Pak. Sidel Actis system 2002 Issue 1+2 saw an interest- ing project: The wizard bottle. The location of the centre line split and the prominent physical features were areas of concern in tool-making and bottle blowing. The complicated shape could finally be realised by using a standard preform. Esterform Packag- ing blew the bottle on a SIG Ecomac machine, R&D realised the moulds. 2003 Issue 2 saw a wide-mouth container blown from a 28mm pre- form, a PET can with an aluminium top, shown by Owens Illinois. In issue 9 Krones reported on their PET beer line which ran at 36,000 bph (0.5 l) at Holsten in Germany. The bottle was a multilayer preform from Amcor and a Bericap DoubleSeal O2S closure. Just one issue later KHS coun- tered with a PET beer line at Martens in Belgium (40,000 x 0.5l bph). Mar- tens used a monolayer bottle that was coated after blowing using the Sidel Actis system. 2004 Special areas in the bottle walls, known as vacuum panels, can expand and contract without deform- ing the whole bottle when being hot filled. However, they make the design of a heat set bottle quite restric- tive. To overcome this, in issue 7+8, Graham Packaging introduced their Active Transverse Panel (ATP) solu- tion, initially adopted by Honest Tea, Maryland, and Malibu Beach Bever- age Group, Georgia. The bottle came with the type of ribs commonly used in water bottles with the aim to realise a completely ribless design. Graham Malibu Beach Beverage bottles 2005 The first panel-less hot fill bottle was launched by Amcor and was featured in issue 5. The struc- tural design of PowerFlex not only eliminated expansion panels, but the containers had a large, completely smooth, label panel – free of any kind of ribbing, enabling Amcor to claim PowerFlex as the first ever, truly panel-less, ribless, hot fill PET bottle, and a real alternative to hot fill glass. Up until then it was impossible for pre- mium brand owners to switch their hot fill products into PET because it was impossible to produce a hot fill PET bottle of the same shape and dimen- sions as their often highly distinctive glass containers. As a result premium juices, teas, isotonics, etc. had to stay in glass containers. Amcor’s recent panel-less hot fill bottle The first PLA bottles popped up in issue 5. However, not all bottles became commercially viable. At the end of the 1980s, the German flavour and fruit juice manufac- turer, Wild, for example, was thinking about launching their “Capri-Sun” fruit juice drink on to the market, both in a 200ml stand-up pouch with a straw, and in what was, at the time, the new PET bottle. To this end, a pilot plant was set up at the Japanese company Nissei ASB Machine Co. Ltd’s main facility in Eppelheim. Here, bottles were produced in two sizes, filled and labelled, and subjected to the necessary stor- age and drop tests. The bottles were a one-piece design with an inwardly curved base and lateral compensating surfaces. Develop- ments in closure and bottle pro- duction were particularly evident in their weight, shape, colour and packaging design. The empty one-litre bottle weighed 85 g and the cap 5 g. The project did not progress further than the experi- mental stage. The “Capri-Sun” one-litre PET bottle never became commercially viable.