Vitality is a word used often by Perrier Vittel to market its Vittel mineral water, which emanates from a hydrothermal basin in the Vosges mountains in France. Equally vital and eye-catching are the polyethylene terephthalate and glass containers Vittel fills and sells to foodservice accounts in Europe and the U.S. A blue-tinted thermoformed oval cup and lid with the McDonald's logo on its friction-fitting lid (bottom right) caught the eye of Packaging World editors at Pack Expo West in Las Vegas and Worldwide Food Expo 97 in Chicago. This cup of Vittel water was introduced to 500 McDonald's outlets in France last year. Standing just over 4" high, the PET container weighs 11.2 g, including its lid and two in-mold labels. The cups are thermoformed, filled and sealed on an Erca-Formseal EF 400 machine made in France and distributed in the U.S. by Autoprod (Clearwater, FL). Using eight-up tooling in a 2x4 configuration, the machine cycles 23 times/min, producing 184 finished containers/min. Each cup holds 33 cL (about 11 oz) of water. "The cup was developed in conjunction with McDonald's and introduced in the spring of '96," says Philippe Riffi, marketing manager for The Perrier Group of America. "McDonald's was looking for a monomaterial container to replace the previous polyvinyl chloride package with foil lid." He says the water cups are sold in France, Belgium and Luxembourg. According to Vittel's public relations agency, McDonald's prices the water at 6.5 francs (about $1.14 U.S.). At the Vittel, France, plant, the process begins as PET sheetstock, believed to come from Adriaplast in France, unwinds through a gripper infeed "table" that precisely delivers it to a heating box where temperature-regulated contact plates warm the material. Male and female tooling is used to form the unusually deep cups within the molds. As this occurs, the four-color printed in-mold paper label is then applied around the top section of the cup. The cup is tapered, with a narrow base ascending into a wider top. Mineral water is then filled into the eight cups. From a separate unwind, the PET lidstock is heated, formed and in-mold-labeled. The lidding web unwinds and is sealed to the base web before cups are punched out of the web.
Vittel taps foodservice markets in Europe, U.S.
French mineral water bottler fills unusual in-mold-labeled thermoformed cup and lid for McDonald's outlets. Vittel also fills PET and glass bottles that are exported to the U.S. foodservice market.
Nov 30, 1997
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