KHS making a greener juice bottle

Düsseldorf, Germany — KHS Corpoplast GmbH developed the first juice bottle made from recycled PET thanks to a glass lining that protects sensitive beverages and then washes away at material recovery facilities.

The Dortmund, Germany-based manufacturer of filling and packaging systems showed its concept bottle called Beyond Juice for the first time at K 2019 in Düsseldorf, Oct. 16-23.

The container uses KHS' FreshSafePET barrier technology. Launched last year, the barrier puts an ultrathin, water-soluble glass coating on the inside of the bottle that washes off during the recycling process.

KHS took its FreshSafePET and added other eco-friendly features for its Beyond Juice concept, Philipp Langhammer, a product manager of barrier technology at KHS, told Plastics News. He pointed to a small recyclable polypropylene label that wraps around the neck of the bottle and adhesive glue dots that can hold six packs of beverages together.

The glue eliminates secondary packaging, such as plastic rings and film wraps. Like the glass coating, which KHS branded as Plasmax, the glue is soluble at 60-80° C and washes away during recycling.

"This package combines all the sustainable technologies that KHS offers," Langhammer said. "The design has a small label so the bottle can be recognized as PET during the sorting and recycling process. If you have a sleeve, it could be recognized as a PP or PE [polyethylene] bottle."

The bottle has earned a made-for-recycling seal from Cologne, Germany-based Interseroh Dienstleistungs GmbH, becoming the environmental services provider's first PET bottle to score 20 out of 20 points.

"Thanks to the seal on the label, for the first time consumers can now allow the bottle's truly excellent recycling properties to influence their decision to buy when standing in front of the supermarket shelf," Interseroh packaging engineer Julian Thielen said in a news release.

When the label and adhesives are removed, the bottle left behind can be recycled more easily than composite juice bottles made of multilayer, blended or scavenger materials, which are used to protect juice products from external pressures like oxygen, Langhammer said.

"The problem is you can't separate the composite materials," he added. "There are layers and additives and they often turn the PET a yellow color," which yields an inferior quality of recyclate.

The FreshSafePET innovation was developed partly in response to a new German law that went into effect in January and aims to boost the country's recycling rate for plastics from 36 percent to 63 percent in 2022. The law increases recycling quotas for all types of packaging and sets higher license fees for producers of containers that are difficult to process.

"In Germany, if you bring a package to the market, you have to register it with a central registration office and a pay a license fee based on what it consists of," Langhammer said. "If you have a fully recyclable package, you pay less."

Another benefit of the Beyond Juice concept is an extended product shelf life. KHS says sensitive juices and spritzers last up to 10 times longer than beverages in uncoated bottles because the thin glass layer prevents oxygen from penetrating the bottle and carbon dioxide from escaping it.

Founded in 1868, KHS started out as a company that built filling systems for the innovation of that era: bottled beer. The business expanded over the decades into other beverages, food and other markets. The company now has 5,081 employees and sales of 1.16 billion euros ($1.3 billion).

'This package combines all the sustainable technologies that KHS offers. The design has a small label so the bottle can be recognized as PET during the sorting and recycling process. If you have a sleeve it could be recognized as a PP or PE [polyethylene] bottle.'