Commercial success of two major foreign beer brands packaged in plastic bottles looks like the first wave in what could soon be a flood of plastic container development here and abroad. As shown in the table, at least nine plastic beer-bottle programs are commercially under way or in development.
The tradition of building molds dedicated to one PET preform design is being challenged by modular tooling with interchangeable parts that can makedifferent preforms from one mold set. Such flexibility offers enormous costsavings--if it is designed into the tool at the start.
