What materials can be used as fruit juice bottle?

Along with the emergence of various kinds of drinks, drink packing industry acquires development. The fruit juice bottle market is no longer dominated by glass container. Metal, plastic and paper containers gradually take over the market. The pop can for carbonated drinks has becomes a classic design, PET bottles for mineral water vary in shape and volume, and 2L package for catering is popular recently.

Glass fruit juice bottle

As a traditional drink container with long history, glass bottle is widely used in juice packing. Even with many other materials pouring into the market, glass container still takes up an important position. This is because it has such superiorities as non-toxic, no smell, transparence, barrier property, tightness, rich raw materials and low-cost. Besides, it is resistant to heat and pressure. Glass fruit juice bottle is easy to clean, and can be used repeatedly. You can sterilize them with high temperature, or preserve them in cold environment. For those fruit juice with higher requirement on container, fruit juice bottle is preferred materials.

Nevertheless, glass bottles has the following disadvantages: heavy weight, easy to break, high transportation cost, and difficult to print. These drawbacks retrains its application. Nowadays, you can hardly find bottled fruit juice on supermarket shelves. Glass bottle fruit juice often appears at school, dinning hall and restaurants.

Metal can

Another common material for fruit juice bottle is metal. Pop can is made of aluminum alloy plates, widely applied in carbonized drinks. It has these advantages:

• Excellent Barrier property: it can keep out not only air but also light, which prolong the shelf life of drinks.
• Good mechanical property: Pop can is resistant to high heat, humidity, pressure and corrosion.
• Damage resistance: pop can is difficult to break, convenient to carry. It is a popular design for fast-pace social life.
• Easy to decorate: logo and patterns are easy to printed on metal can so as to promote sale.
• Cycle use: metal container can be melt down and recycled.

Also, metal fruit juice bottle has some drawbacks. It is unstable in mechanical property, less resistant to alkali. If the internal coating is inferior, it would affect the drink taste. As raw materials for pop can need a great deal of import. The price is high and the production process is polluting, so pop can is not supported by government and public organizations.

Plastic fruit juice bottle

The demand for plastic bottle keeps growing in today’s drink market. The plasticity contributes to the emergence of various shapes of fruit juice bottle.

PE (polyethylene), the world’s largest production of synthetic resin, is the most widely applied packing materials. High-density PE are usually made into bottles or other hollow container by blow molding. With good heat sealing ability, PE container are often used to pack citrus juice and other fruit juice.

PVC (polyvinyl chloride) bottles can be made by ISBM (injection stretch blow molding) or EBM (extrusion blow molding). The former one features uniform thickness, without suture on the body, used to contain cola and soda. The later one serves as the container for fruit juice and mineral water.

PP (polypropylene) is a new trend in plastic packing recently. Technology has improved the transparency of PP bottles. With low cost and high resistance to pressure and temperature, they are applied in packing drinks who need high-temperature sterilization.

PET (polyester) bottles has high transparency and glossiness. With similar appearance as glass, it’s an excellent substitute for glass fruit juice bottle. The production of PET bottle grows rapidly. They serves as container for tea, fruit juice and those need hot filling. Looking from the world scope, PET bottle takes up 70% of the drink market.

Paper container

Usually, papers are compounded with PE film or aluminum foil and made into drink container like tetra pack or Combibloe Package. Paper container appears as roof shape or square brick. Paper container is recyclable, low in cost and light in weight, with no pollution to environment, which is regarded as green package. Paper containers are usually applied in milk, yoghourt, diary drinks, tea drinks and fruit juice package.

However, compounded paper container is inferior than glass fruit juice bottle, metal can and plastic container in pressure resistance and air-tightness. You cannot heat it for sterilization. For preformed paper container, the PE film can get oxidized and lose heat sealing property, or become rough due to fold or fibrous sclerosis. This may cause difficulties for filling machines.

To sum up, raw materials for fruit juice bottles are mainly glass, metal, plastic and paper. Nowadays, plastic bottle is the most widely used container. Different containers has their advantages and weakness, which affect the quality of fruit juice. Meanwhile, the filling and packing machines also have impact on juice quality. As a professional fruit juice machinery supplier in China, we can provide you with high quality fruit filling and packing machine, as well as fruit sorting, washing, extracting equipments.