PET Engineering has developed a 500ml PET bottle in collaboration with Gea Procomac for Ready-to-drink, the latest addition to Huel's product line. Huel offers customers nutritionally complete meals with a mission surrounding convenience, affordability and lessening the impact on animals and the environment.
The packaging design meets the brand’s two main requirements: coherency with the existing product portfolio and functionality. The first requirement was met by creating a simple shape, by choosing white to colour the preform, which is also useful to protect the bottle's contents, and by using a full-sleeve to give the brand great visibility, as is also the case for the cardboard packaging and single packs already on the market. With regard to functionality, the large 38mm mouthpiece allows the bottle to be quickly used on-the-go in a practical way, making it perfect if you don't have much time and when you don’t have access to a kitchen to prepare a healthy and well-balanced meal.
Focus on the technology
The bottle is produced with an aseptic line supplied by GEA, which includes a GEA ABF 1.2 system. The GEA aseptic line - which obtained the FDA LONO certificate for producing and distributing in the USA ambient temperature shelf-stable low acid beverages - is based on an integrated aseptic blowing, filling and capping process and it is equipped with a 100% aseptic blower. The FDA clearance confirms that GEA’s ABF 1.2 technology ensures maximum sterilization efficiency and reliability during every step of sensitive beverage bottling.
Thanks to the microbiological isolator extended also to the blower module, GEA ABF 1.2 aseptically blows preforms that have been previously sterilized with hydrogen peroxide vapor (VHP), treating simultaneously their inner and outer surfaces. The result is a single step preform sterilization process that grants a 100% process treatment monitoring and requires no rinsing water and significantly low chemical consumption. With ABF 1.2, which features continuous monitoring of each sterilization process parameter as fully automated operation cycles, the risk of recontamination of any sensitive drinks during bottling is erased.
