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Amcor’s Panel-less, Ribless Hot Fill PET Bottle Debuts With Tradewinds Tea
19 August 2005
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Tradewinds Tea is hitting market shelves with the first commercial application of Amcor PET Packaging’s panel-less PowerFlex bottle. The bottles can be run on existing glass filling lines with little or no equipment modification.
The company had been hesitant up until now to convert its 16-ounce, premium, ready-to-drink tea beverages to PET.
“We’ve been waiting for a PET bottle to come along that would give us the ability to maintain the same look and feel of our current glass container,” says Christy Lichtendahl, marketing manager for Tradewinds Beverage Company.
PowerFlex’s hot-fill (182°-192° degrees Fahrenheit) packaging offers brand owners a large, smooth, label panel—free from ribbing.
That reportedly makes PowerFlex the first-ever, panel-less, ribless, hot-fill PET bottle.
The PowerFlex features a proprietary base. Previously, ribs or panels in the sidewall were necessary to absorb the distortion that occurs as a hot-filled beverage cools to room temperature. (Tradewinds tea is filled at temperatures between 180-185 degrees Fahrenheit.) After the bottle is capped, the filled liquid cools, which in turn pulls an internal vacuum that must be dissipated structurally.
Amcor’s technical staff, through a combination of design and manufacturing innovations, created a bottle that absorbs vacuum via a specially designed base. A unique diaphragm within the base draws upward as the liquid cools. It has the geometric characteristics to enable the inverted cone shaped diaphragm to deflect upward as the vacuum is created.
“When considering a PET bottle, we had several design objectives. It was important to us to replicate our Tradewinds logo on the bottleneck. Also the bottle needed to have smooth panels so that we could apply our existing pressure-sensitive label,” Lichtendahl explains.
Because PowerFlex doesn’t have panels in the sidewall, Tradewinds say this makes the bottle easier to label. The bottler reportedly doesn’t have to worry about mislabelling missing the vertical bars in applying labels. Nor does it have to worry about the unsightly ripple effect that labelling over panels can cause.
Initially, Tradewinds is introducing six of its eleven flavours in a 16-ounce PowerFlex bottle, with a 38mm finish—sweet tea, extra sweet tea, green tea, raspberry, diet sweet tea and honey tea with ginseng.
The company is optimistic that the addition of the PET alternative to its line will open distribution channels that are not traditionally glass-friendly such as pools, schools, golf courses, stadiums, theatres and other convenience-oriented locations where breakage is an issue. And the company reports there is also the significant freight savings as a result of the lighter weight bottles.
The PowerFlex bottle reportedly runs smoothly on its glass bottling line with only minimal changeover—removing the need for complicated and expensive filling line retrofits.
“We are able to run both the pressure-sensitive body label and neck shrink label on existing equipment without modification. To alter the filler, we use a set of change parts and we’ve added a second capper to accommodate the new polypropylene closure,” Lichtendahl explains.
Additionally the geometry of the straight wall design gives PowerFlex ‘great top load characteristics’. The straight wall has no points of stress concentration, which removes the potential of bending.
The company had been hesitant up until now to convert its 16-ounce, premium, ready-to-drink tea beverages to PET.
“We’ve been waiting for a PET bottle to come along that would give us the ability to maintain the same look and feel of our current glass container,” says Christy Lichtendahl, marketing manager for Tradewinds Beverage Company.
PowerFlex’s hot-fill (182°-192° degrees Fahrenheit) packaging offers brand owners a large, smooth, label panel—free from ribbing.
That reportedly makes PowerFlex the first-ever, panel-less, ribless, hot-fill PET bottle.
The PowerFlex features a proprietary base. Previously, ribs or panels in the sidewall were necessary to absorb the distortion that occurs as a hot-filled beverage cools to room temperature. (Tradewinds tea is filled at temperatures between 180-185 degrees Fahrenheit.) After the bottle is capped, the filled liquid cools, which in turn pulls an internal vacuum that must be dissipated structurally.
Amcor’s technical staff, through a combination of design and manufacturing innovations, created a bottle that absorbs vacuum via a specially designed base. A unique diaphragm within the base draws upward as the liquid cools. It has the geometric characteristics to enable the inverted cone shaped diaphragm to deflect upward as the vacuum is created.
“When considering a PET bottle, we had several design objectives. It was important to us to replicate our Tradewinds logo on the bottleneck. Also the bottle needed to have smooth panels so that we could apply our existing pressure-sensitive label,” Lichtendahl explains.
Because PowerFlex doesn’t have panels in the sidewall, Tradewinds say this makes the bottle easier to label. The bottler reportedly doesn’t have to worry about mislabelling missing the vertical bars in applying labels. Nor does it have to worry about the unsightly ripple effect that labelling over panels can cause.
Initially, Tradewinds is introducing six of its eleven flavours in a 16-ounce PowerFlex bottle, with a 38mm finish—sweet tea, extra sweet tea, green tea, raspberry, diet sweet tea and honey tea with ginseng.
The company is optimistic that the addition of the PET alternative to its line will open distribution channels that are not traditionally glass-friendly such as pools, schools, golf courses, stadiums, theatres and other convenience-oriented locations where breakage is an issue. And the company reports there is also the significant freight savings as a result of the lighter weight bottles.
The PowerFlex bottle reportedly runs smoothly on its glass bottling line with only minimal changeover—removing the need for complicated and expensive filling line retrofits.
“We are able to run both the pressure-sensitive body label and neck shrink label on existing equipment without modification. To alter the filler, we use a set of change parts and we’ve added a second capper to accommodate the new polypropylene closure,” Lichtendahl explains.
Additionally the geometry of the straight wall design gives PowerFlex ‘great top load characteristics’. The straight wall has no points of stress concentration, which removes the potential of bending.
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