We consume beverage drinks every day, like juice, water even milk, and take jams of various flavors, these bottles beverages and food are very common in our daily lives. Have you ever been curious about how are they packaged in containers? In this article, we will focus on packaging methods.
With the rapid development of the beverage and food industry, they have become more complex and functional, therefore, the way of packaging has to be more diversified in order to meet the various requirements of beverages. Choosing the right method of fulfilling will keep your beverage safe, maintain product quality and nutritional value, as well as meet your storage and shelf-life requests.
Generally, processing options include hot fill, cold fill and aseptic in the current market. Packaging containers include bottles both glass and plastic, cans, lined paperboard cartons and flexible containers such as pouches. Among those existing filling methods, hot filling plays a necessary and critical role, especially in protecting and extending the shelf life of beverages. If you are interested in gaining the knowledge of hot filling, as well as other methods, please keep on reading.
What is Hot Filling ?
Hot filling is a process where the product is heated and filled at a high temperature to sterilize the product and the container and closure. With hot filling method, producers can avoid harmful bacteria in the bottle or liquid which could damage or contaminate the products during packaging process. This methos will allow for a loner shelf life, resulting in fewer discarded products. What’s more, hot filling is relatively inexpensive, which promote this method popular in beverage industry throughout the world.
How Does Hot Filling Work ?
During hot filling process, the liquid will be heated to a temperature of 194 to 203 degree Fahrenheit in order to remove any harmful bacteria or microorganisms which may be in the product. The hot liquid is then injected into a container, the bottle being capped, and then the container will be turned on its side or inverted, allowing the heat to sterilize the closure properly as well. The heat treatment will last between 10 and 30 seconds, which is long enough to ensure sterilization. Next, the product is cooled between 180 and 185 degrees Fahrenheit before being transferred into the final container (in some instances) and sealed well. Cooling continues after transfer for up 3 minutes.
Five main steps of hot filling process:
Step 1–Heating the beverages
Step 2–Injecting the beverages into containers
Step 3–Sealing the containers to ensure completely sterilization
Step 4–Cooling beverages and containers again.
Step 5–Air dryers will remove remaining water from the containers in preparation for labeling and secondary packaging.
Containers Fit Hot Filling
Hot filling can be used in glass bottles and cans, but also fit PET bottles. PET bottles can withstand the heat involved with hot filling without collapsing or becoming deformed. Containers which are suitable for hot filling process usually are heavier in the body, neck and cap in order to withstand the heat. Obviously, heat set bottles are heavier and more complicated to produce compared to standard containers, they tend to cost more. Find a reliable glass bottle manufacturer is important, because quality glass packaging will avoid many problems appeared in bottling process.
There are a variety of hot filling equipment lines that accommodate different container types and sizes. Whether you decide to buy your own hot filling equipment or work with a co-packer, make sure your container is compatible with all the filling, labeling, and packaging equipment.
Beverages Fit Hot Filling
Not all beverages are suitable for hot filling. Low acid beverages and food, or those with fiber or pulp, are not compatible with hot filling because spores are more likely to survive after sterilization. What’s worse, some contents can even be subject to degradation or spoilage when exposed to high temperatures. In general, hot filling is suitable for fruit juices, vegetable juices, flavored waters, and sports drinks that have a PH level less than 4.6. Only with the correct PH level, producers can ensure that bacteria will not grow in the remaining spores.
Temperature for Hot Filling
Hot filling a product removes the need for preservatives without damaging the product’s taste, vitamins, and nutrients which is why the right temperature is crucial for success.
Temperature plays a key role in the hot filling process and if it becomes to low, microbiological agents may develop which pose a health and safety risk. Therefore, hot filling process requires constant monitoring. Thus, the recirculation system always take part in hot filling manufacturing to keep production moving with a backup system in place if a container or the liquid drops below a pre-set temperature.
Benefits of Hot Filling
Hot filling is very important for food and beverage industries that need to supply their customers with convenient shelf-stable consumables such as long-life products. It destroys any harmful bacteria present within the product or bottle that could cause spoilage of the product and rendering it unfit for consumption. This process also means that food waste can be greatly reduced because having a longer shelf-life will result in fewer food and beverage being discarded by consumers.
Advantage 1: Expanding the shelf-life
The hot filling method can improve the using time by removing many microorganisms that could contaminate the drink. Without the presence of these bacteria, the beverage will be stored in the best environment. Furthermore, with the sterilization from the bottle to the cap, this process will minimize the damage of the gas or microbes from natural air.
Advantage 2: Give consumers trust that your products are safe
From the process of hot filling above, we know that beverages are heated at a high temperature and then sterilized before bottling. As a result, there will be no worries about extra preservatives or other artificial additives. Therefore, the customer can reply on the quality of products that remain as original as possible.
Advantage 3: Remain healthy ingredients and good tastes
With the perfect protection of hot filling by natural method, it can reduce the external impacts on the beverages. Vitamins and nutrients are well preserved.
Advantage 4: Friendly and promote the PET
Hot filling process is widely used the PET containers for beverage and food. As we all know, PET is much lighter in weight than glass bottles, which is perfect for transport and deliver the drinks.
Other Filling Methods
Apart from hot filling method, there are many other existing fulfilling options used in beverage and food industries, mainly including cold filling and aspetic filling.
Hot filling has its restrictions and limitations especially for those products with low PH level. Hence, cold filling is the perfect alternative method, which is greatly recommended for those products such as milk and fresh juice, as well as some pharmaceutical products. In contrast to the hot filling method which uses heat to sterilize, the cold filling method uses extreme cold to kill bacteria. Almost any packaging container works well for the cold filling process since the containers no need to withstand the high heat during filling. There are some advantages of cold filling method that we can’t avoid, including lower costs, various plastics being used easily, saving space and energy, keeping the tastes of products etc.
Another filling method is aspetic filling with still products without CO2, any PH and density in particular like juices, nectars, tea, beverages without CO2. Aseptic filling is suitable for high acid products and the products can last up to 18 months and is great for dairy and beverages in glass, Aluminum, as well as PET containers.
Conclusion
We are China glass bottle manufacturer, expert in supplying various of glass container bottles for beverage and food, wines and liquor spirits including vodka, rum, gin, whiskey. A wide range of glass bottles for various industries are available. We stick to cost-effective, customer-orientation, fast-delivery. If you are looking for high-quality glass bottle, we are your trusted glass bottle supplier.
