Not long ago, a French wine manufacturer launched a red wine product in the United States packaged with Tetra Prisma. The packaging capacity is 1L, recyclable and easy to carry. Compared with traditional glass packaging, this packaging can save up to 90% of the cost. Because of its light weight, the cost of transportation is also greatly reduced. This example shows that flexible packaging is gradually penetrating into the field of traditional hard packaging and poses a certain threat to hard packaging. Of course, if you want to really replace hard packaging, flexible packaging needs to go a long way, especially in the beverage industry. However, the industry has realized this inevitable trend, that is, plastic is gradually replacing the position of glass and metal. The threat of plastic. Plastic hard packaging has three major advantages: strong, lightweight and low cost. If you add transparency, it is enough to be comparable to glass. In fact, most of the condiments originally packaged in glass bottles have been converted to PET bottles. Not only that, plastic hard packaging is widely used by vegetable oil, bottled water and other products. Transparency is a very important feature. Consumers want to see the quality of the contents through packaging, especially products such as vegetable oil. The most typical representative of plastic hard packaging is the bottle wall is very thin plastic bottles, this bottle accounts for almost half of all plastic packaging on the market, the scope involves vegetable oil, bottled water and so on. The main reason why thin-walled plastic bottles are so popular is low cost. By using this plastic bottle, the manufacturer meets the price requirements of consumers. Plastic packaging has many points, for example: plastic packaging can take a multi-layer structure design, and even add aluminum foil layer, which makes a single package feature rich. But this does not conform to the 3R principle, especially the last R-recyclable (recycle). How to use transparent plastic bottles to fill oxygen-sensitive beverages is the focus of current technology research and development. The weight of the PET bottle is only 1/7 of the glass bottle, and it will not break. It has enjoyed great success in soft drink packaging, especially in 2-3L capacity bottles. In recent years, small-capacity, single-person ready-to-drink beverages have slowly abandoned the original glass or canned packaging and replaced them with PET bottles. However, the road to changing beer from glass bottles to PET is extremely difficult. The bottle body must have strong barrier properties to carbon dioxide and oxygen, and must have the advantages of transparency and firmness. The unit cost of PET bottles is twice that of ordinary glass bottles, and its air permeability is very high, especially oxygen and carbon dioxide. The shelf life of beer depends on the maximum time that its taste can be maintained, and the penetration of oxygen will directly affect the taste of beer. In addition, a decrease in the degree of carbonation can also lead to a change in the taste of the beer. At present, the research focus of plastic materials is on how to improve the barrier properties of plastic bottles to oxygen and carbon dioxide, and how to extend the shelf life of plastic bottled beer. Another big obstacle is the way beer is filled. At present, 80% of the world's beer is sterilized by tunnel pasteurization. The temperature used in this process is not necessarily acceptable for PET bottles.

At present, the types of beer in plastic bottles are very limited, and what can be seen on the market is only small-capacity beer used in sports competitions and other occasions.

Of course, technology developers will not easily admit defeat in the face of challenges. Through painstaking research, they have launched a number of plastic bottled beer solutions to meet the requirements of producers and consumers. However, none of these existing programs can fully meet the needs of the market, but each has its own strengths. Different products and different markets require different solutions, and it is often not the technology that drives the product, but the market. The barrier coating technology extends the shelf life and improves the oxygen barrier performance, while the active multi-layer bottle has high processing flexibility and oxygen barrier performance, but the shelf life is short. In addition, no matter how strong the oxygen barrier capacity of the bottle body, the sealing is still a big problem. For small-capacity bottles, the oxygen that permeates from the bottle mouth has a great influence on the taste of beer, so that all efforts spent on the barrier of the bottle wall are in vain. At present, the bottle cap can be used with metal crown cap, plastic cap and aluminum screw cap. Plastic bottled beer needs a full set of solutions that combine the bottle body and the bottle cap, so the bottle cap with high barrier performance is also in urgent need of development. Judging from the current development situation, glass bottled beer will still be used for some time, and the future of plastic bottles is also very optimistic. With the efforts of R & D personnel and the continuous improvement of technology, plastic bottled beer will have a good development prospect. The characteristics of plastics determine that it is not renewable, even if it is hard plastic packaging. At present, there are various innovative technologies and material applications in the field of plastic hard packaging, including blow molding, injection molding, extrusion, thermoforming and vacuum forming.