The latest innovation from Gepack is a range of PET jars with VERY thick walls that improve barrier properties and are perfect for packaging soluble coffee or other alimentary substances that require high barrier strengths to prevent flavour loss or nutrient decomposition.

Gepack also manufactures the temper-evident caps that include induction or press sensitive opercula to further reduce any loss of flavour.  This integral solution, comprising bottle + cap, and manufactured by GEPACK in one specific process, has a very attractive price compared with glass.

Traditionally, glass has been used as the packaging medium of choice for products like soluble coffee, wine or oils, but Gepack is doing its best to demythologize this perception, owing to some interesting points in PET’s favour:

1. Price per bottle.
2. No breakages (glass +/- 3% of breakage causing numerous stoppages on the filling line with very high costs - other bottles in boxes affected by the breaking of 1 bottle).
3. Transport costs at least 15% lower (as boxes do not require card separators, every box holds + 20% bottles).
4. Due to wide variations in the internal and external diameter of the glass, even when produced at the same glass manufacturer, the caps are not, normally, leak proof, after the opercule has been broken.
5. The product does not escape through the top, even when PET bottles fall. In supermarkets, broken bottles contaminate boxes and shelving. Supermarkets are starting to require PET packaging so as to avoid this problem which can block corridors for cleaning.
6. Already used by many packaging companies in Europe, especially those exporting to international markets.
7. The quality of properly made PET bottles is similar to that of glass bottles which is fundamental for aromatic products that require high-quality packaging with a hardness similar to that of glass.

As a footnote, environmentally speaking, the recycling of 1 ton of glass produces 4 times more emissions of CO2 than the transformation of PET packaging.  For this reason it is backed by environmentalist movements and E.U. foodstuff legislation, which is to become increasingly more demanding in Europe.