Secondary Packaging

Early Times pours into PET

Following the success of its switch to PET from glass for Canadian Mist blended whisky in 1999, Brown-Forman Beverage Worldwide in November launched a 1.75-L PET bottle for its Early Times Kentucky whisky. Like Canadian Mist, the Early Times bottle is injection stretch/blow-molded by Schmalbach-Lubeca (Manchester, MI).

December 31, 2001

Containers & Closures: Page 204

Adhesives/tape

Euro lawncare products drum up sales

Canisters made of recycled paperboard have been making inroads throughout Europe as a primary package that provides stackability and pleasing graphics for fertilizers.

December 31, 2001

Conveying & accumulation

Web plus: A dot-com looks for packaging solutions

Overstock.com offers a variety of name-brand surplus merchandise, such as toys, diamond rings, and TVs, for up to 70% off the retail price. Just like a catalog retailer, this Internet retailer must invest in quality packaging to ship products to consumers.

December 31, 2001

Converting equipment

Sonoco buys Smurfit core plan

EXCLUSIVE NEWS FROM OUR EUROPEAN PARTNER: SONOCO, the US-based global packaging company, has purchased Smurfit UK's core and tube converting business from Jefferson Smurfit Group. Click logo for full article.

November 30, 2001

Flexibles

Baking kits display holiday spirit

Betty Crocker has cooked up a timely product for the season: holiday baking kits in four varieties. The kits from Minneapolis, MN-based General Mills are packaged in creative and colorful boxes with precision die cuts. Although introduced last year—and seasonally for Halloween—this winter's kits offer new features.

November 30, 2001

Coding, Printing & Labeling

Labeling switch nets savings

Minute Maid is in the process of switching from in-mold labels to heat-transfer decoration on all 1-gal high-density polyethylene bottles for its popular Hi-C beverages. According to Ernest Dunlap, manager of packaging at the Houston-based beverage firm, the change aims to reduce unsaleables at retail.

November 30, 2001

Containers

Achievements

Arlington Press Pharmaceutical Packaging (Schaumburg, IL), a wholly owned business unit of Impaxx, Inc., has been certified by AstraZeneca to deliver products to its Westborough, MA, facility without incoming inspections.

November 30, 2001

Containers

Relocations, expansions

Impaxx, Inc. (Schaumburg, IL) has expanded its printing facility in Raleigh, NC, doubling the building’s size. —Avery Dennison Corp.

November 30, 2001

Flexibles

Perrier sleeves 1-gal PET bottles

Perrier debuts several of its brands in PET jugs decorated with stretch sleeve labels printed in eight colors. New molding, sleeving equipment highlights revamped lines at two facilities.

November 30, 2001

Controls & Machine Components

Wake up and smell the standards!

Attention packaging machine buyers. Take this quick quiz: Are you fed up with trying to maintain increasingly computerized packaging equipment, networks, and plants?

November 30, 2001

Conveying & accumulation

Scale system shines at Diamond

A twin-head, triple-pan scale system at Diamond of California’s Robertsdale, AL, plant reduces giveaway, lessens labor costs, and saves on forklift rental costs.

November 30, 2001

Closures

Abita tests pasteurizable beer in PET

Abita Brewery next year plans to commercialize beer in a one-way multilayer plastic bottle that’s pasteurizable. Until now, the plastic bottles typically used for beer didn’t have sufficient thermal resistance to withstand pasteurization, so brewers choosing to use plastic have had to rely on some form of cold filtering or flash pasteurization. But the availability of this new tunnel-pasteurizable bottle could make one-way plastic beer bottles a viable option for a lot more brewers. Abita Brewery, based in Abita Springs, LA, is a regional craft brewer.

October 31, 2001

Flexibles

Canny cosmetics

In a market where impulse purchases rule, Markwins Intl., has raised the visibility of its cosmetics through unique packaging. The City of Industry, CA-based company’s “glam in a can™” cosmetics that were introduced at select mass merchandisers nationwide in August are packaged in transparent 1-gal paint cans.

October 31, 2001