TCL Hofmann breaks the bottleneck for oil producers

A move by producers of edible oils, sauces, dressings and syrups away from standardised bottles to new lightweight containers made of PET is being supported with a new range of closures from Melbourne's TCL Hofmann.

The company is now offering the sector the ability to adopt new closures from Germany's Bericap specifically designed for reduced neck-size PET bottles.

Bericap has developed the EV 28/26, a press-on closure suiting the lightweight bottle neck, the PCO 1881.

The PCO 1881 neck is already used extensively in the beverage industry, offering a lightweight neck and weighing only 3.82g. TCL Hofmann packaging manager Emmet Sheeran says the new closures enable the use of these necks for edible oils, sauces, dressings and syrups.

“Until 2010, large sections of the edible oil industry used PET bottles with the standard 29/21 bottleneck,” Sheeran says. “This neck size was developed at a time when plastic closures had to fit both glass bottles and PET bottles.

“Based on its long-standing experience with closures for PET bottles, Bericap expedited the development of lightweight closures, particularly for bottle neck weight reduction."

The newly developed series of edible oil closures come in one-piece and two-piece versions with various features for a bottle neck diameter of 26mm.

Sheeran says the benefits of such lightweight bottles and closures has been demonstrated by one international edible oil producer, which achieved significant savings in product costs, resin use and carbon footprint by converting its containers from a 29/21 neck to the 26/21 neck.

Sheeran says the new closures offer smaller edible oil bottling companies in the market, which may have problems in easily switching to special lightweight necks, to make the transition to PCO 1881 necks.

In addition, he says, companies producing different product categories could look to the technology to rationalise their portfolios and bundle their bottle or pre-form purchasing power by concentrating on one neck size.

The EV 28/26 press-on closure is equipped with a screw cap to open the bottle and the content is protected with a membrane as a tamper-evident feature. It also has a special dripless function to avoid spillage after pouring, and can be supplied with or without a flow regulator.