Juices, sports drinks or Ice Tea are hot filled in many countries. Following the cost saving trend as well as saving in material the hot fill market has converted to lighter necks whilst switching from 43mm to 38mm neck diameter. This mainly happened in the North American market, where more than 80% of the bottled juices are hot filled.
For its hot fill closures BERICAP uses the well established DoubleSeal™ technology for 1-pc closures, which also has proven outstanding tightness at CO2 containing products since more than 10 years now, even if the neck had been slightly damaged.
Since the market introduction of 1-pc hot fill closures in China 2004, also Europe and later India did show more interest for 1-pc closures for hot filled products. The latest market introduction of a DoubleSeal™ 28mm closure was jointly achieved with a multinational filler in Russia filling tea variants. Very recently the Double Seal™ 38mm hot fill closure was introduced into the market in Egypt with the launch of the Juhayna brand, offering 4 different flavours.
The 1-pc closure technology for hot fill bottles offers a light weight solution compared to 2-pcs closure systems and furthermore avoids the expensive liner, which is used in 2-pcs closures. The vacuum of a bottles closed with a 1-pc closure breaks only after a nearly 90° turn. A 2-pcs closure loses its vacuum already after a few degrees turn, which can already happen with an accidental turn or back-off of the closure. A risk is given that the product can start fermenting before consuming.
Beside the 38mm and 28mm closure BERICAP offers further diameters for the for hot fill applications, which will be reported in short future. Further developments for hot fill closures allowing the use of light weight necks are in development. Based on this development significant material costs can be saved and the related Carbon Footprint can be reduced drastically as well.
| dominique-paul.vallee(at)bericap.com |
