Page 50 - Packaging News Mar-Apr 2020
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BEVERAGE PACKAGING | www.packagingnews.com.au | March-April 2020
 Sidel installs flexible PET line for
Sidel has installed a complete flexible PET line to handle sensitive beverages and carbonated soft drinks for Bickford’s Australia. This is the first time Bickford’s has invested in aseptic technology with dry preform decontamination.
  BICKFORD’S needed a solution. It was moving into new products, and the company needed a versatile piece of equipment. The company needed a way to handle both still and sparkling products, as well as low and high acid products with
two different short bottle necks and two distinct decoration possibilities.
It found that Sidel’s flexible PET line fit the profile. Angelo Kotses, Bickford’s CEO and owner, says the company was mainly familiar with hot-filling PET applications.
“We decided to partially shift to aseptic PET bottling because we wanted to optimise our production set-up and achieve a better total cost of ownership, which is of course critical if you plan to attract more consumers,” he says.
“Plus, we wanted to diversify our product portfolio by introducing new references, including dairy products and plant-based alterna- tives, and by also moving some drinks formerly packaged in glass and can to PET.”
For the project, Bickford’s invested
in a complete and versatile PET line that has the capacity manage both sensitive product and carbonated soft drink through an Aseptic Combi PredisTM and a Combi SF300, respectively.
The system gives Bickford’s a wide branding surface to apply sleeve labels and pressure-sensitive labels.
In total, the new line now pro- cesses more than 20 different SKUs including still water, coffee bever- ages, four different flavoured waters, and eight types of juices – all in either 250ml, 500ml, or 1l formats. The first sellable product from the new line was introduced to the mar- ket last year.
Throughout the project, packaging experts from Sidel worked in collab- oration with Bickford’s marketing team to launch the new products.
Beverley Reeves, senior brand manager at Bickford’s, says the com- pany was looking to achieve an iconic shape to help the brand stand out in the crowded fields of bottled water and carbonated soft drinks.
“Our new bottles needed to offer
MAIN: Bickford’s new line handles more than 20 different SKUs.
OPPOSITE: Bickford’s has been operating since 1839.
convenient handling to our consum- ers and be robust enough to hold their ergonomic shape and carbon- ation once opened,” Reeves says.
Sidel designed new containers for the 1l Aqua Pura branded water, applicable both to sparkling and still water, with the latter supported by the StarLITETM base. To accommo- date future needs, Sidel also devel- oped an additional 600 ml design, perfectly applicable to a variety of recipes, including flavoured water.
A redesign was also necessary for the family of drinks previously packaged with hot-fill technology. In this case, the priority was to opti- mise the packaging while keeping the same brand attributes, also decreasing the weight of the bottle.
By changing the production set-up from hot-fill packaging to aseptic PET bottling with dry preform ster- ilisation, Bickford’s halved the weight of their 1l juice bottle – down to 32 grams – while enhancing its attractiveness and expanding its shelf life up to eight months.
The new bottles are designed with
  











































































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