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New twist on aseptic juice bottling

In France, orange juice joins the ranks of fruit juices aseptically packaged in rigid plastic containers. The six-month shelf life comes with an assist from a layer of EVOH.

French consumers are so impressed with Pulpea orange they named it the product of the year in the beverage category in the annua
French consumers are so impressed with Pulpea orange they named it the product of the year in the beverage category in the annua

Aseptic filling of fruit juices and drinks into bottles of polyethylene terephthalate is a concept beverage marketers around the world are watching closely. Shelf stability, product visibility, light weight, ease of handling, and resistance to shattering are a few of its attractions. Another advantage is that compared to hot-filling, used for glass and heat-set PET bottles, the high-temperature/short time processing used in aseptic packaging can deliver a product with a fresher, less "processed" taste and superior nutrition profile.

Now from France comes word of a new player in the aseptic-filling-of-rigid-plastic-containers game: a five-layer bottle coextrusion blown of high-density polyethylene/tie layer/ethylene vinyl alcohol/tie layer/HDPE. Joker, a prominent and privately held French beverage marketer based in Macon, introduced Pulpea Orange in the unusual bottle in June of 1995. Joker coextrusion blows the bottle in house on a Techne (Savena, Italy) system and fills it on an aseptic filler supplied by Remy, represented in North America by Geosaf Inc. (Montreal, Quebec, Canada). Bottles are sterilized with hydrogen peroxide in the Remy process.

Joker calls the bottle "BOTOP." (It's from "beaux," the French word for "beautiful," shortened in this case to "bo," and "top," referring to top quality.) According to marketing manager Chantal Roclore, shelf-stable orange juice in France is either hot-filled in glass bottles or filled aseptically in paperboard/foil juice boxes.

Marketing strategy

At Joker, the basic strategy is to pack what might be called "regular" orange juice, the kind made from concentrate, in aseptic juice boxes that retail for six francs ($1.21) per liter. At the high end is not-from-concentrate juice hot-filled in glass that retails for 11 francs ($2.23) per liter.

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