Many Good Reasons for Liquid Dairy to Switch to PET Packaging

With light and oxygen affecting milk- and plant-based drinks, how can PET ensure a safe product?

It is important to highlight that PET barrier solutions ensure product safety across the supply chain, with good oxygen barrier properties, 15 to 30 times higher compared to monolayer and three-layer HDPE (High Density Polyethylene). Regarding light protection, this is achieved through different preform manufacturing technologies and their light blocking capabilities. One of them is the injection of monolayer preform, using a standard injection tool system, mixing PET material with master batch from various suppliers. The other one is the multilayer preform, which can be produced using either over-moulding or co-injection technologies. Those barrier solutions are adjustable in terms of additives and weight according to product recipe, bottle size, and the desired extended shelf life to be achieved.

Across the globe we see a trend towards functional and health-oriented drinks in different packaging with varying sizes. How can PET address these challenges and help meet the changing customer needs?

For any product type or package format released on the market, PET packaging gives the op-portunity to attract consumers with great brand differentiation due to the bottle design freedom offered by the Injection Stretch Blow-Moulding (ISBM) technology and by the inherent and ge-ometric properties of the PET raw material itself. Round or square, asymmetric or with specific handling, its high marketing potential opens up virtually unlimited possibilities to design what-ever premium or affordable package. While providing a unique communication platform for brands – that are increasingly using labels or the container itself to engage with their consum-ers – PET bottles are also allowing users to see the content inside, thanks to their transparen-cy. Easy to open and handle, it is a functional and convenient type of package leading to a great consumer experience.

As market demands are quickly changing, shifting from standard bottle size towards smaller packages, PET offers sheer endless possibilities to enhance production flexibility with simple and easy changeovers on the production line while refreshing the brand of a complete bottle family from large to on-the-go formats to answer every need. Sidel can help in designing a unique and ergonomic bottle in line with dairy brands’ requirements. We can evaluate PET bottle strength and performance across the supply chain: through laboratory tests under real production and supply chain conditions, we determine the most suitable packaging designs, PET barrier solutions, sizes, shapes, caps, and filling volumes.

To manage the booming product diversification and SKU’s proliferation, how can the dairy players benefit from a flexible and cost-effective PET bottling production?

In this industry, production flexibility is particularly key in terms of product recipes, bottle for-mats and shapes, cap and label applications: all of that without compromising on high line ef-ficiency over time. Low and high acid products can be bottled on the same Sidel Aseptic PET packaging line, from 0.2 litres to 2 litres formats. Bottles can be sealed with standard flat caps or sport caps from 28 mm to 38 mm, including the possibility to add specific over-caps, to further differentiate the bottles. To ensure a reliable and efficient production, the line is designed to offer maximum flexibility with reduced downtime for product changeovers, and a simple three-hour cleaning and sterilisation period between bottle-to-bottle productions.

Working as a versatile marketing tool, the PET bottles offer many possibilities when it comes to decoration. On top of roll-fed labels or sleeve labels, a complete sleeve covering the cap can also be used, as such increasing the communication-facing surface. The same bottle shape can be customised with different cap colours and label decorations in order to easily multiply the SKUs with minor changes in the production process. Adaptable to niche markets or mass production, the Sidel Aseptic PET complete lines are optimised from low to high speed outputs, with a range spanning from 10,000 to 60,000 bottles per hour according to the forecasted pro-duction volumes.