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Switch to PET brings icy look

United Distillers & Vintners recently replaced glass with polyethylene terephthalate for 200-mL (6.76-oz) bottles of its TGI Friday’s® On the Rocks line of ready-to-drink cocktails. The custom bottles are injection/stretch blow molded by Schmalbach-Lubeca.

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“We wanted to enhance convenience and portability by going to PET,” says Christina Catalano, packaging design director at the Stamford, CT, spirits company. “Our goal was to achieve a proprietary and refreshing look.”

While the 200-mL glass container being replaced was round with vertical fluting, the new plastic container has a surface that resembles ice cubes. Schmalbach (Manchester, MI) hand etched each mold surface because the mold machining process couldn’t achieve such a complex and random surface. Hand etching was followed by a gentle form of sand blasting, called “bead blasting,” to smooth out the lines in between the cuts.

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