Many companies have started using PET bottles for their products. Photograph: PSA

Walk down the beverages alley of any retail store these days and you lot will find the shelves laden with a wide choice of branded non-carbonated juices or juice-based drinks. A bulk of these beverages are packaged in the all too familiar Tetra Pak Slim aseptic bricks in identical sizes and shapes which can be distinguished only past their colors and graphics. Another large category of the drinks, specially the recently launched Nimbupani inspired variants and Parle Agro's pop Frooti and Coke's Maaza are packaged in PET bottles with bright shrink-sleeve labels. Del Monte'due south three-piece juice cans with Easy Open ends represent some other juice packaging format – though non yet so popular with other brands. Some regional brands are as well seen sometimes in Standipaks, Spout-pouches, or the always trustworthy glass bottles. Overall, the packaging options available currently to brand marketers wishing to compete in the trendy, lifestyle led, health-fad influenced, non-carbonated beverage market are limited and boring as some might term it.

For the M70 billion (Usa$ 14 billion) beverage market in India eyeing well-nigh twenty% annual growth in its M1,500 one thousand thousand (lxxx million cases) elevation-end 100% juice market place, this limited selection of packaging options cannot be good news. Per capita, juice consumption in India is reported to be merely a spoonful of 20 ml in comparison to China's wholesome 1500 ml. Quite obviously, urban youth, young role-goers, and health-conscious young adults form the vast majority of consumers for juice-based beverages. Such consumers identify with change and are known to seek differentiation in their product choices. To drive growth in this segment, therefore, brand marketers take to exist prepared to offer choice and innovative packs to fit in with young lifestyles.

While achieving distinctive pack differentiation is a articulate objective in this segment, the high unit costs of packaging material and filling equipment tin can be a very serious limitation. A Tetrapak Slim 200 ml pack sold at an MRP of M15 can price equally much as M3 per pack for main and secondary packaging. Similarly, a 1000 ml Tetra Pak Slim sold at an MRP of M88 requires M10 per pack for the packaging. On the other hand, a m ml pack of mango drink in a PET bottle, sold at an MRP of M48 requires a much higher proportion of packaging cost. At M9 per pack, the PET bottle is a costlier pack selection and yet it cannot offer the benefit of the superior shelf-life of the Tetrapak. (It is another affair that the college toll of packaging per pack in PET is offset past the much lower found and performance costs that let smaller production runs, pack material order quantities, and on-demand packaging.) Under the circumstances there is always a need to advisedly weigh the potential benefit of introducing a nonstandard pack format versus an already proven format. The chances are that the nonstandard package carries with information technology a higher per-unit toll every bit well equally a high risk of market failure. All the same, with increasing consumer affluence and acceptance of the health benefits of juices the cosmos of unique, iconic packaging for juice appears to exist a risk worth considering, even at a higher cost!

Luckily, the recently developed, accolade-winning format by Huhtamaki Ronsberg and Herrmann Ultraschalltechnik, known as Cyclero Drinkbag offers one such exciting choice. The Cyclero Drinkbag was reported to accept acquired a stir in the beverages market in 2007 when it was first presented and won an accolade for being 1 of the 'nearly artistic and innovative packaging solutions on the market.' It was exhibited in India recently at Plastindia 2022 by Mechatronica Due south.C, the well-known manufacturers of Lami-tube making machines — Kombis, through their trading partner in India — Contour Packaging.

The Cyclero Drinkbag offers a completely new and trendy approach to soft drink packaging. While it looks but like a normal aluminum tin information technology is actually a cylindrical stand-up pouch. It is described equally a 'logical optimization of conventional stand-up pouches without the sealed side-seams.' Information technology was originally developed as a substitute for conventional pouches for the German supermarket chain Aldi to market their Amarov brand of Coffee Pods. The switch from packaging in pouches to Cyclero was described every bit a move to packaging in a flexible tin can that could protect the production inside from getting crushed too as prevent aroma loss. A manager of Packaging Global Technology at Kraft Foods described the pack as a 'very creative, lightweight, hermetic pack, blending rigid and flexible packaging options, promising a lot of futurity opportunities across a broad range of products.' It was hailed past flexible packaging experts as launching a completely new, innovative, and revolutionary concept for the flexible packaging and aluminum foil sector.

Coffee Pod packaging represents the commencement market use of this revolutionary technology. A 4-layer Oriented Polypropylene / Polyethylene Terephthalate / Al Foil / Polypropylene

(OPP/PET/foil/PP) laminate rotogravure printed up to eight-colours is used to offer improved production protection and real differentiation at the betoken of sale. Information technology is piece of cake to open and reclose, while the rounded trunk is tactile and comfortable to hold and is stable on the shelf.

Real juice is also bachelor in Tetra pack

The Cyclero FFS organisation featuring the Mechatronica Kombis bodymaker tin be installed in a space equally small every bit 70 square meters to form-make full-seal the packs automatically at loftier speed. The procedure involves the following fundamental stations —

Bodymaker: Required lengths of the printed foil laminate are drawn and rolled into a motion-picture show tube around a mandrel. The two overlapping ends of the film tube laminate are sealed past ultrasonic heat sealing technology especially developed by Herrmann Ultrasonics.

Lid sealing: Pre-cut and formed lids are drawn from a magazine stack and sealed by ultrasonic sealing to the picture show tube head. The lids feature an easy-open facility with a tape opening that allows the beverage to be poured out once opened. The upper inner rim of the film tube is likewise reinforced past the lid to ensure the stability of the pack fifty-fifty when it is opened.

Filling and bottom sealing: Product filling is done at this station after which the pre-cut, pre-formed bottoms are also sealed. The sealing technology used ensures seal through contamination to produce a reliable filled pack in every case.

Ejecting and packing: Pistons and air pressure are used to squirt the filled, sealed packs on to a conveyor that will take them forrard to the end-of-line packing area. On-line batch coding and sell-past appointment marking are done at this station.

Cleaning: The entire system is capable of being done and air dried to ensure aseptic product.

Past all accounts, the Cyclero Drinkbag offers powerful arguments in its favor. It has the lowest per-unit pack weight for its size when compared to equivalent drinking glass, PET, carton or metal cans. It does not need to be transported to the filling station in pre-formed condition and therefore saves lorry freight. It is among the everyman user of not-renewable resources in its manufacturing. Past its depression weight and thin walls which tin can be hands crushed when empty, information technology generates the least waste volume. It can be printed brightly. Information technology can be hands chilled. Its manufacturers claim, "95% of all people would buy a drink in a Cyclero pack." Yes, it is indeed an exciting pack innovation and the manufacturers have all the answers. Just, as the pop proverb goes, 'he who knows all the answers has not yet been asked all the questions.

The Cyclero pack is here and the people at Profile Packaging who tin can aid to answer all the questions are eager to meet y'all.

This commodity was originally published in the February 2022 print issue of Packaging South asia.

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