Lightweight PET

With its 0.5-liter PET bottle with a screw cap for highly carbonated beverages KHS is setting new standards in lightweighting. The bottle weighs just 10.9 grams which on an international scale makes it the lightest PET container for heavily carbonated beverages of its kind and size currently on the market.

The project was initiated by a customer request to optimize the weight of the 12.5-gram bottle used to date to the maximum – without detriment to consumer handling. This also meant that one of the essential requirements was that the bottle be resealable. One of the key steps in the process was the reworking of the bottle thread.

If we assume that 100 million lightweight bottles are produced at a beverage plant per annum, at an average PET price of 1.30 EUR per kilogram over 200 000 EUR in costs are saved a year compared to the 12.5-gram version. And that’s just in materials. At the same time the bottle consumes less energy in its production and CO₂ emissions during shipping are reduced by the lower weight.