Claude's Sauces, Inc., El Paso, TX, has launched eight varieties of barbecue sauces and marinades in Amcor's (www.amcor.com) 16-oz, long-neck PowerFlex™ PET bottle, commercializing the bottle's first nonbeverage application. A move from glass, the PET bottle has generated a 50-percent drop in freight costs and a 90-percent reduction in breakage/damaged goods charge-backs from retailers, according to Claude's. And because the company standardized on a 16-oz size, from a mix of 12- and 16-oz bottles, production changeover time went from 4 or 5 hr, to less than one. “We've been in business for thirty years and for the past three or four we had been looking for an attractive plastic bottle that could accommodate both hot and cold fills,” explains Joe Castanada, owner of Claude's Sauces.

Castanada takes pride in his mouth-watering formulations, starting with the original brisket marinade developed more than three decades ago. Claude's Sauces is a small company but its goal is to “try and keep up with the big boys.” As a result, the natural evolution was to find a lighter weight alternative to its glass bottle in order to reduce breakage and freight costs. Castanada turned to bottle distributor, Berlin Packaging (www.berlinpackaging.com), and challenged his sales representative to find a plastic alternative that would accommodate both cold fills (80 to 90 deg F) and hot (180 to185 deg F). The stock bottle with a 38-mm neck finish also had to have the esthetics to effectively showcase the brand. Berlin introduced the PowerFlex bottle, which features a patented, panel-less design that tackles hot filling. The structural design absorbs vacuum via its specially designed base with a unique diaphragm.