Closures

Heinz 'caps' squeeze ketchup

Complex new cap/liner on plastic bottles offers new consumer features, most prominently by ending the watery discharge caused by product settling.

April 30, 2000

Detergents/cleaners: Page 34

Converting equipment

Switch to PET

Nutrition supplement marketer Natrol of Chatsworth, CA, gained numerous benefits last fall when it eliminated containers made of glass, high-density polyethylene or polystyrene in favor of polyethylene terephthalate.

April 30, 2000

Coding, Printing & Labeling

EPA labeling proposal bugs industry

Agency proposal would ban numerous terms from labels of anti-microbial products—and even trade names.

April 30, 2000

Blisters/clamshells/skin packaging

Containers capture consumer convenience

Surf wax in a deodorant-like container, an ergonomic waste container for biohazardous materials and a snowmobile lubricant in a jug designed for mittened hands are among this year’s NACD award winners.

April 30, 2000

Conveying & accumulation

New code's legibility smears its predecessor

Casa de Oro Foods’ new date coder produces a clean, legible date code on taco-shell cartons, tortilla bags and corrugated shippers. Downtime is minimal.

April 30, 2000

Detergents/cleaners

Sebastian goes for clean and contemporary

When the Sebastian Collection reaches Sebastian Collective Salons next month, it will include four hair cleansers and three conditioners in 250-mL custom bottles from Captive Plastics (Piscataway, NJ).

March 31, 2000

Controls & Machine Components

Smurfit-Stone: Paper canister

Smurfit-Stone (Chicago, IL) has developed PaperCan™, which uses a paperboard body with an integrated easy-to-open-and-close paperboard lid. Made of laminated or barrier-coated paperboard that can be linear or blank-formed.

March 31, 2000

Converting equipment

Competition touts top tubes

A shave gel tube that doubles as a razor was named the most innovative among the winners of the 1999 Tube of the Year competition sponsored by the Tube Council of North America (New York, NY).

March 31, 2000

Flexibles

Magic American's magic labels

Consumers can see vibrant label graphics on the container-contact side of the back label, boosting shelf presence. Sufficient opacity built into back label prevents vibrant graphics from bleeding through the copy printed on the outer ply.

February 29, 2000

Conveying & accumulation

Fit for filling 'round the clock

Aberfoyle Springs fills 500-mL PET bottles at a rate of 630/min seven days a week, in two 11-hour shifts each day. ‘We train our people like there’s no tomorrow.’

February 29, 2000

Feeding/inserting/unscrambling

Partition inserter for P&G bottles

Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble’s recent decision to go nationwide with its 300-oz Press Tap container of liquid detergent (see PW, Feb. ‘99, p.8 or packworld.

January 31, 2000

Blisters/clamshells/skin packaging

Amish packager takes hands-on approach

A new skin-pack machine provides an Amish manufacturer of brass curios with a smaller, cleaner-looking package that occupies less space on gift-shop shelves.

January 31, 2000

Sustainability

California battle looms over plastics recycling

Plastics recycling and recycled content of containers initiate new legislative conflicts in California. Industry and environmentalists appear polarized, as legislators look for common ground.

October 31, 1999