On the occasion of the Global Beverage Sustainability Awards, held in Warsaw on April 16  during InnoBev 2013, the Italian designer of PET beverage packaging PET Engineering was awarded with the "Best light-weighting" prize for its patented solution "Swerve Neck".
The awards recognize the beverage industry's best practice in environmental sustainability across a range of categories from water usage efficiency to packaging development and promoting environmental awareness amongst consumers.
Swerve Neck allows savings up to 20% in the neck finish and in the area under the support ledge, without compromising their behaviour during blowing, filling, capping processes, transport and final use.
It creates an inner ring between the neck finish and the area under the support ledge that leads to the following benefits:
- the patented geometry allows less accumulation of material in the area under the support ledge keeping it at a distance from the mould sufficient to prevent its cooling. This plastic material remains at such a temperature that can be still stretchable and distributed on the body of the bottle, transforming the material from amorphous and unused into a structuring one;
- the stiffness of the ring into the neck finish allows a further reduction of the thickness without compromising the performance of the container which, indeed, improves its vertical top load.
Sanpellegrino Group was the first mineral water producer to adopt Swerve Neck for the production of its Levissima half a litre size, blown with the 22% of PET, which is less than the one used in the previous bottle of the same size.