The following article addresses the possibilities of bottling beer in polyester bottles and clarifies the question regarding to what extent existing glass bottling systems are suitable for filling polyester bottles.

Specifications for labels can be very easily defined: They have to look good and run on the labelling machine without any problems. In order to be able to guarantee these characteristics for clients and users in the food processing industry, an extensive quality assurance system is required on the part of the label printer. How does this look in actual applications and what implications has it for users?

Specifications and label quality are topics not readily familiar to everybody because many operations have used individual decorations for years, along the lines "Never change a running system". When changes are required, they rely on the skill of printers and hope that the change-over will not lead to major problems.

There are several reasons for assuming that the label scene is changing. On the one hand, the Standard Terms and Conditions of Sale for labels were passed last year. This remedied a somewhat unsatisfactory situation where each and every filling operation drew up quality specifications for printers which were satisfactory to a greater or lesser extent. Filling operations can now operate within a framework where they can work with something tangible, i.e. with figures.

With wine becoming the investment of choice among brewers, Lion Nathan decided to follow the general trend. In May the Tasman brewer bought a 13.5% stake in the wine company Montana Group, New Zealand’s biggest wine group, for about A$55 million. Montana, which has a dual listing on the New Zealand and Australian stock exchanges, holds more than 35% of the NZ wine market.
In August, Lion Nathan said it intended to raise the stake by 5% to 25%. The announcement came amid speculation that Lion Nathan only raised its stake to block Foster’s Brewing Group, which had also eyed up Montana. There had been a rumour as early as last year that Foster’s might offer up to A$485 million for Montana..

Breweries and beverage producers alike invest a great amount of money in printed and TV advertising to present their products and to give them top ranking. The sales packaging itself must consequently not lag behind these expectations. Today’s markets demand perfect bottle dressings. Proper positioning of all labels on the bottles, the product dressing, is assumed as a matter of course.

At the same time, operations are subjected to extreme internal rationalization pressure where efficient bottling is a major cost factor and changeover and servicing intervals are to be reduced to a minimum. Based on these criteria, KHS has developed a completely new line of cold-glue labellers that at is being introduced for the first time.
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Whereas only a few years ago beer and soft drinks were being packed primarily in standardised returnable packs, nowadays we are seeing a definite trend towards highly differentiated dress and packaging options. Worldwide, non-returnable containers are on the advance. Increasingly varied packages and bottle dress ideas are required to support the marketing concepts involved.

These progressively more sophisticated wishes dreamed up by the marketing departments of course entail concomitantly tougher demands for the versatility of the bottling lines concerned. We have used a realistic example to determine how different line concepts affect the overall bottling costs: the occasionally surprising results are presented below.
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