Continuing our walk down memory lane as we celebrate our 25th anniversary, we’re a little surprised by how frequently the challenges faced today are not so terribly different than those faced by packaging professionals in the past. Producing handled PET containers is a good example. A June 1999 article about Ocean Spray’s efforts to incorporate a handle in its 1-gal heat-set PET bottles (Photo 1) is echoed by a story in our January 2019 issue (see the article at pwgo.to/4059) that describes the patented BottleOne 1-gal injection stretch blow-molded PET bottle with integral handle (Photo 2). The BottleOne technology is more elegant in that the bottle is blown from an injection-molded preform that already incorporates the handle. With the Ocean Spray bottle, by contrast, the PET preform is blow-molded around a pre-formed handle.
