Brewers are major users of PET packaging because of the considerable advantages which the material offers – in particular, greater safety and lighter weight than glass and a smaller environmental impact than either glass or aluminium.
At the same time, PET offers good shelf life and appeal for bottled beers.
Safety
Many sporting and entertainment events now permit beer to be served only in PET/PEN bottles or plastic cups because of health and safety concerns about other packaging formats. PET bottles are preferred by retailers at these venues because it avoids the process of having to pour beer into plastic cups, making service faster and giving consumers something that is easier to carry.
Since most brewers need to have a presence at major sporting and cultural events for marketing purposes, this alone ensures that PET packaging for beer has been widely adopted since the first PET beer bottles were introduced in the 1990s.
PET bottles are virtually impossible to break and, even when crushed, they have no sharp edges.
For brewers, bottlers, shippers and retailers (as well as for end users) the integrity of PET bottles means no losses from breakage.
PET has additional health and safety benefits. There is no risk, for example, of production failures leading to sharp edges on containers or sharp fragments contaminating the brand owner’s products.
Weight
A typical PET beer bottle weighs only around 15 per cent as much as a typical glass beer bottle of the same volume. This means that the environmental and financial transport costs for beer packed in PET can be substantially lower than for beer in glass bottles.
This transport benefit can be particularly significant in dealing with the return of refillable bottles for washing and refilling.
We have been involved in several projects with leading brewers aimed at ‘lightweighting’ bottles to maximise the weight benefits of the PET packaging format – and also providing economic and environmental benefits through reduced materials use.
Environmental impact
Studies have shown that PET container production results in less greenhouse gas emissions and uses less energy than glass or aluminium cans. PET beer bottles are fully recyclable and, in some cases, reusable.
The use of refillable PET bottles has all the environmental advantages implicit in the material combined with benefits arising from the bottle being reused up to 25 times in its lifetime, prior to being recycled in a ‘closed loop’ where the material is used to create new containers. Where systems and facilities for this type of reuse and recycling exist, this is a highly sustainable packaging technology.
Petainer is the market leader in refillable technologies in Western Europe and Scandinavia and we are working closely with many major brands to further improve the environmental performance of refillable containers.
In the large container sector, Petainer PET kegs are an attractive alternative to traditional metal kegs for the bulk transport and storage of beer. In addition to having lower environmental impacts than metal kegs they offer lower total costs of ownership, easier response to new market opportunities and improved capacity to meet short-term peaks and troughs in demand.
Shelf life
The shelf life of a beer depends on how long it keeps its flavour, which is limited both by exposure to oxygen and by loss of carbonation.
Recent developments in PET have greatly increased the shelf life that it can offer to bottled beers because of significant improvements in barrier materials and technologies. These are aimed at keeping oxygen out of the bottle and retaining CO2.
The life is determined not only by the material of the container and closure (gas permeation through the bottle closure can be significant for small bottle sizes) but also by the way the bottle is designed and manufactured.
Where protection from light is important in extending shelf life, PET containers can be produced in highly opaque formats in a variety of colours.
Shelf appeal
PET beer bottles can be produced in a wide range of shapes, sizes and colours. The scope is limited only by the imagination of the designer.
This permits bottles to be created which boost sales through their ‘shelf appeal’, grabbing the attention of shoppers.
Petainer has considerable expertise not just in the technology of PET bottle manufacture but also in understanding consumers. We undertake international market research to investigate the relationship between brands, products, packaging and purchasing. This expertise is available to our customers through our extensive consultancy services.
We undertake fully-informed ‘packaging audits’ for brewers and bottlers, identifying opportunities to introduce new packaging concepts. We have helped major brands introduce PET packaging in order to obtain functional, cost and sales benefits. Combining our expertise in ‘design for manufacture’ and ‘design for market’ produces sustainable, cost-effective packaging with real shelf appeal.
At Petainer we have a passion for innovation and for taking new ideas from concept through to production.
Kegs
Petainer has launched a family of lightweight PET kegs in sizes up to 40 litres. Designed to be recycled with other PET containers once empty, the Petainer Keg offers substantial environmental and economic benefits to brewers and other keg users, particularly when compared with metal kegs.
Petainer Kegs are available with a one-way, low cost fitting which allow them to be connected to existing tapping systems for draught beer.
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