Apple sauce in a bushel of jar sizes

Knouse Foods, a Peach Glen, PA, apple processor, adds a 24-oz PET apple sauce jar for its Musselman's and Lucky Leaf brands. The 24-oz size, which joins 48- and 64-oz sizes, gives Knouse a full line of custom hot-fill PET jars. Produced by Graham Packaging (www.graham), which says it currently supplies nearly 100 percent of the hot-filled plastic jars used in the apple sauce industry, the jar offers numerous advantages: It's lightweight; easy to grip and open; and is preferred by most consumers. Plastic jars are 20-percent lighter than comparably sized glass jars, it says, and 30 percent more cases can be shipped per truck, according to Graham. Plastic jars also sustain less in-store damage because they resist shattering and stack well on shelves. Graham's hot-fillable apple sauce jars have recommended fill temperatures of 195 to 205 deg F and accept both one-piece plastic and two-piece combination closures in 63 to 70 mm sizes.