Sidel's new PET bottle is designed to offer an increased competitive advantage for liquid dairy manufacturers.

The mini-size has been designed for products such as drinking and probiotic yoghurts with capacities between 65ml to 150ml and is ideally suited for ambient and cold chain processes. The bottle would also suit applications within the juice, nectar, soft drinks, isotonics and tea sector, the company said.

“This new format has been launched to support the liquid dairy product industry where the use of PET packaging has increasingly become an attractive alternative,” said Laurent Naveau, Packaging Innovator Leader at Sidel. “Part of Sidel’s continuous packaging optimization program, this bottle is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and costs while also offering new marketing opportunities and high production performance for manufacturers.”

By switching to PET, manufacturers can achieve up to a 40 percent cost reduction when moving from polystyrene to PET and a 20 percent reduction from HDPE (high density polyethylene), the company adds.

“Our new size has the best-in-class bottle weight with just 3.9g for a 100ml extended shelf-life bottle and 5.4g for 100ml aseptic bottle achieved through a dedicated preform design. This new preform design is qualified for 100% rPET content and also enables a low blowing pressure below 15 bars. Sidel’s new PET mini-bottle guarantees producers total product integrity while also offering compatibility with a range of safe, convenient capping solutions," said Naveau.