March 11, 2015

2 Min Read
Hot-fillable bottle quenches a thirst for Hispanic tea

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To launch Tomandote™, a brand name that combines two Spanish words “tomando” and “te,” which mean “drinking” and “tea,” respectively. Tomandote is being called the first Hispanic-inspired, ready-to-drink tea line. Marketer Mongo, Inc., Moorpark, CA, is opting for Amcor's (www.amcor.com) 16-oz long-neck PowerFlex™ PET bottle. About a year ago, Mongo's director Frank Ruvalcaba, realized that there weren't any commercially-available RTD teas in the market that were based on traditional Hispanic formulas.



“I've drunk lemongrass tea since I was a kid,” he says. “There was something about the way that my grandmother used to make it that made it a little more special. As I become an adult, I learned how to brew the tea at home, but it was too much of a hassle to bring it into the office,” explains Ruvalcaba. “That's when I came up with the idea to bottle it.”

Before Tomandote could be commercialized, Ruvalcaba had to find the right bottle. The product is hot-filled, so Mongo thought of using a PET bottle that had ribbed sidewalls. “We were pleasantly surprised when we found out about Amcor's PowerFlex. The bottle looks like it's glass,” Ruvalcaba points out. The patented panel-less design can be easily hot-filled at temperatures to 185 deg F though it has a completely smooth label panel. The bottle absorbs the vacuum created by hot filling via its specially designed base. A unique diaphragm within the base draws upward as the liquid cools. It has the geometric characteristics to enable the inverted cone shaped diaphragm to deflect upward as the vacuum is created. The stock, 16-oz long-neck design has a 38-mm finish.

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