Alcoholic drinks no barrier to PET

SAN JOSE, CALIF. (March 1, 2:10 p.m. ET) -- Enhanced barrier PET bottles continue to secure some high profile niche applications in the alcoholic beverage industry, demonstrating that the benefits of PET need not be restricted to the soft drinks sector.

US brewer Gordon Biersch has announced one of the highest profile applications for barrier PET to date with the launch of a new 16-ounce bottle for airline operator Virgin America.

Based in San Jose, Gordon Biersch is a relative newcomer to the US brewing scene, but it takes tradition very seriously. Founded in 1988, the company brews all of its beers in accordance with the original Bavarian purity law of 1516, importing its barley and hops from Bavaria to ensure an authentic taste.

Today, the company has grown beyond its microbrewery beginnings - it brews around 11.7 million litres of beer a year. Around 5 percent goes into PET, enabling the company to supply a high quality alternative to the draught beers sold in plastic containers at events in the United States.

Gordon Biersch has no fears for the quality of PET-packaged beers, supplying its flagship Marzen product to Virgin America. The PET bottle, which was designed and manufactured by Ball Corp.'s Watertown, Wis., plant, and is internally coated using SiOx barrier technology from KHS subsidiary Plasmax, was fully evaluated against the brewer's standard glass container.

"We tasted the beer side-by-side with our glass bottles and it was impossible to tell the difference between the two," says Dan Gordon, one of Gordon Biersch's co-founders.

Gordon Biersch sales and marketing manager Shayla Moore said that a key requirement of its PET bottle is to maintain the look and feel that its customers are familiar with.

"We came up with a 16-ounce bottle that resembles our normal 12-ounce glass bottle in color, shape and feel," says Moore. "Our 16-ounce bottles even have pry-top [crown] caps just like our 12-ounce glass bottles."

Belgian brewer and pioneer of PET packaged beer Brouwerij Martens - which launched its first beers in barrier PET bottles in 2003 - has now introduced its barrier PET beer bottles to the Chinese market.

Martens is using bottles coated internally with Sidel's Actis barrier and closed with a DoubleSeal SuperShorty Crown O2 scavenger closure from Bericap.

The bottles are produced and filled with Martens' premium 1758 beer at its joint venture brewery at Suzhou, China - which Martens set up with Taiwanese partner Far Eastern Group in 2008. China is a fast growing market for bottled beers.

According to Bericap, a scavenger cap both reduces oxygen transmission into the bottle and absorbs any oxygen in the headspace.

The Martens plant at Suzhou uses the latest high output bottle blowing and coating equipment from French machinery maker Sidel. This comprises two SBO 20 Universal blowing machines and two Actis 48 coating units capable of delivering up to 60,000 bottles per hour.

The Suzhou facility is modeled on Martens' brewery at Kaulille in Belgium, which opened in 2007 and is considered one of the most efficient in Europe. Its Belgian barrier bottle production capacity includes two Sidel blowing machines (SBO20 and SBO14 units) linked to five Sidel Actis 20 coating units capable of handling 50,000 bottles per hour. It also has a KHS Corpoplast Blomax 8 system with a Plasmax 12D coater capable of manufacturing 12,500 bottles an hour.

All of the production at the Chinese plant - around 300 million litres - is sold under the Martens brand but in Europe around 85 percent of the company's output is own-brand product for major retailers.

Barrier PET bottles are also making headway in that most conservative of markets - the wine industry. A number of North American wine bottlers, such as Vancouver, British Columbia-based Painted Turtle, already have barrier PET packaged products on the market.

French wine negociant Paul Sapin, based in Macon, is one of the pioneers in Europe for wine in PET, having supplied single-serve products to the airline industry for close to two decades. Four years ago it started researching enhanced barrier bottles to provide extended shelf life. That research program has led to the development, together with European PET bottle producer Artenius PET Packaging Europe (APPE) and closure maker Novembal, of a multilayer PET bottle with a PE capsule cap.

"We have proved a two year shelf life on a 75cl bottle and we are currently testing an 18.7cl bottle. We believe we will achieve a similar two year shelf life," says Clare Montgomery, sales director at Paul Sapin's UK-based distributor and investment partner Roger Harris Wines.

Montgomery says the secret of the extended shelf life is a combination of the bottle design, which uses the BindOx MXD6 polyamide barrier technology from APPE, together with Paul Sapin's own filling and bottling technology and cap design. A standard Novembal PE capsule design is used on the 75cl bottle with a special design developed exclusively for Paul Sapin on the smaller 18.7cl pack.

Montgomery says around one third of Paul Sapin's output is now in PET. The company filled around 12 million PET bottles last year, one third of which were standard 75cl size bottles. "This is definitely a growing market," she says.

The PET bottles are considerably lighter than glass - providing a 35 percent weight saving on a filled glass alternative - and of course are unbreakable. Montgomery says that multilayer PET bottles are also now cost competitive, not the case in the past.

"Because of the volumes we now have a competitive process. The bottle cost is now comparable to glass but there is a significant saving on transport and breakages," she says.

Despite the cost improvements, however, PET adoption has been faster in areas such as Sweden and Canada, where the wine industry is more tightly regulated through supply monopolies.

"We have supplied more than a million bottles to the Swedish alcohol monopoly. [It likes] the light weight and that PET uses less energy to produce and recycle. In the UK retailers are interested, because of the reduction in packaging weight, but they focus on what the consumer reaction may be," says Montgomery.

Market research carried out on behalf of the company last year showed that UK consumers are most attracted to the weight savings and unbreakability, with many saying they would choose PET over glass if they were buying wine for an outdoor event such as a picnic or festival.

One aspect of the PET package that does not seem to detract from its appeal is the capsule screw closure. While APPE has trialled a synthetic cork closure for its multi-layer wine bottles, Montgomery says that Paul Sapin is unlikely to go down that route.

"We feel the screw cap is the way to go and see a cork as a bit of a backward step. When you have the convenience of a lightweight bottle why go back to the inconvenience of needing a corkscrew," she says.

Catch up with the latest developments in the enhanced barrier PET bottle marketplace at the European Plastics News Barrier PET Bottles conference in Brussels, Belgium, in May.
 

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