Breaking the convention, Fanta's new bottle adopts a spiral design

[China Packaging Network News] Fanta drink was first listed in the 1940s and is the largest brand of Coca-Cola following Coca-Cola. After years of continuous development, the bottles have also undergone several generations of changes.

Then, the popularity of the Fanta Splash (splash) bottle shape has made it the mainstream bottle shape for gas drinks on supermarket shelves in major market countries, virtually weakening Fanta drinks as the second largest U.S. overseas brand and thus extremely important to the Coca-Cola family. The uniqueness of the product on the bottle shape.

This is why Coca-Cola began designing and developing a new generation of exclusive Fanta capsules (for PET bottles and glass bottles) to provide Fanta with a new global protection standard. As with the previous generation of bottles, the new bottle after volume production is 100% recyclable.

Support Fanta brand rejuvenation

Gregory Bentley, the Coca-Cola packaging engineer responsible for the overall project coordination, explained: “Funda has been successful in the international soft drinks market for many years. Splash bottle shape has become the representative bottle shape of carbonated soft drinks, and is no longer the brand of Fanta. This means that the time has come to redesign the bottle and use impact bottles to make the product stand out again."

The Coca-Cola team worked closely with Drink Works's Leyton Hardwick and his team (Drink Works defeated four other opponents and stood out from the design competition) and was supported by the Fanta Packing team network. Bentley said: "We have established a global information network so that we can collect the latest packaging information, specific market requirements, and continuous feedback on appropriate design ideas."

To create a new bottle shape, it is necessary to accurately understand the characteristics of the PET material under pressure. In particular, how carbonated beverages cause deformation of different parts of the bottle body. Poor handling may lead to beverage spillage.

Through the global technology network, Coca-Cola also introduced experienced supplier partners to overcome this design problem. In the development of packaging projects, Sidel played a key role in participating in the mass production verification of the new Fanta Bottle.

Deal with asymmetry and stability

This PET bottle designed by Drink Works is very creative and unique, and it can be said to be "breaking the convention" in the design of carbonated soft drink PET bottles. Its bottle is spiral-shaped, inspired by the twisted orange squeezed to squeeze orange juice. It uses a series of bottle ribs and embellished with small bubbles, while the lower part of the bottle is twisted. The spiral design gives the Fanta Bottle an unusually asymmetrical structure, which poses a real challenge to the development of the bottle and the need to solve the problem of bottle deformation and stability.

Bentley said: "We are working hard to achieve this spiral design, which is truly unique in the design of PET packaging containers for carbonated beverages, and Sidel supports us to overcome the difficulties caused by this design."

Sidel packaging expert Jérôme Neveu explained: “Any two sides of the bottle must be the same in the stretch of the blank to avoid verticality problems. We have optimized the orientation of the grip and the corner of the bottom of the bottle so that the bottle is filled. After installation, keep the geometry unchanged."

During the entire project process, the design was continuously improved from the perspective of brand marketing and packaging performance to obtain the best solution. Spiral bottles need to undergo full design testing and refinement and refinement. After more than 60 technical drawings have been replaced, and using computer analysis techniques for finite element analysis to test bottle performance. In addition, it also needed to produce 15 test molds and conduct feasibility tests to verify the final bottle design. Sidel successfully completed this task.

Bentley concluded by saying: "The final PET bottle design has been thoroughly tested to ensure that the vertical stretch under pressure is optimally controlled and that the packaging container meets all Coca-Cola quality and performance requirements. The new bottle has the same physical strength as the previous one. The Fanta Splash bottle is as good as it is. In addition, Sidel also conducted other line stability tests, which proved that the design is suitable for high-speed filling."

One of the requirements of the Coca-Cola Design Program is to ensure that the label panel is the same size and position as the Sprite bottle and the Contour bottle. Drink Works meets this requirement without affecting the design by moving the existing label panel up the bottle. This technology solution brings real efficiency improvements to Coca-Cola bottling partners in the production of different types of bottles and label changeovers. The new label panel position also brings excellent visual effects so that the labels will no longer be obscured by the shelf front panel or stacked items.

Widely used design

The bottles of the entire Fanta series have a similar bottle shape, and now the market can see 500ml, 1L, 1.5L and 2L bottles. With the spiral design, the 1.5L and 2L bottles are easier to hold, and the experience when pouring drinks is better. Through successful cooperation with Sidel, Coca-Cola developed a 500ml spiral bottle specifically for the gravity-based tilt shelves commonly used in cold chain distribution to ensure shelf stability. This requires the use of specific design rules, and the number and location of the bubbles surrounding the ribs forming the spiral shape must be extremely accurate.

In the entire development process of PET bottles, one issue that has always been considered is whether or not new bottles can be used on glass bottles. This goal has also been successfully achieved. At present, the new Fanta PET spiral bottle has been listed in Italy, Poland, Malta, Serbia, Finland, Romania and the United Kingdom, and is planned to be rolled out to the world in the next few months.