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Bottle Paneling
I am working on a product launch and the product is a 16oz fill into a tall cylindrical bottle with a disc top and induction seal. We are having problems with the bottle paneling about 24 hours after filling on the production line. I am looking for anyone who might have gone through a similar experience and have some knowledge on how the remedied the situation. Thanks!
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18 Replies
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What do you mean exactly? You mean the bottle is partially collapsing? That would be a filling temperature issue, unless you bought the bottles from some substandard supplier (not unknown - I have had to junk hundreds of bottles once due to quality issues).
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What’s the product here, I have seen similar issues with few formulation types specially in home care.
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Yes the bottle is partially collapsing as you describe.The product is a soap with natural fragrance in one variant and essential oils in the other. Both are collapsing but the one with essential oils is collapsing more. The soap is not surfactant based but soap based.
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Can only be (1) you are filling too hot and the volume reduction as it cools is causing the collapse, or (2) the walls of the bottle are substandard thickness or (3) something in your formula is attacking PET :#
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What is the material the bottle is made of? Is it PET?
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Let me guess, one of the components of your essential oils. Have seen it with dipentene paneling a top class heavy duty HDPE 10 gallon bottle.
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I have seen the same issue in PET. In many cases, we fixed it by changing the material of the components.
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I believe the bottles might be HDPE but they are very flimsy and have a repeatable soft spot on all bottles in the same spot in all mold #’s.
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Well that’s it then. You need to change supplier and return all those rubbish bottles.
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If you are using a reputable manufacturer, the plastic type is reflected on the bottom of the component.If there is a repeatable soft spot that is flimsy, @Belassi is spot on. You need to send them back.
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Thanks all!
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I cannot stress too highly the need to do Q/A on any incoming item. I got burnt like this too. I bought 400 shampoo bottles and put them into store while I used the remainder of existing stock. Three weeks later I began to use them and the whole lot had to be junked, and the supplier refused to accept them back because of the three week delay. Needless to say I changed supplier.
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What is the pH of your product? PET bottles do not like high pH.As others have suggested it is probably the essential oils / fragrance combined with poor quality bottles. -
The pH of the product is around 9.50.
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Without a list of all your ingredients it’s all just a guess.
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Either the pH or one of the components of essential oils is still my guess. I have seen both in my lab with a bleach liquid and a dipentene stored in HDPE containers, separately.
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Have you done any compatibility testing between your formula and the plastic bottle? Have you tested under freezer, oven and room temp. conditions? If yes, has any of your materials and formula changed from the compatibility tests to the actual production run?
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@MArchambault
don’t bother switching out your materiale (HDPE is the low end of the packaging spectrum, they’ll all have thin walls).hot-fill. HDPE is pretty inert (chemically), but its thermal coefficient of expansion, is beyond ridiculous. so when your product cools, it pulls in a side. in your case, “the weak side”.
unless you have insanely thick walls, this will be a problem (due to your material choice).
either fill cooler (unlikely), or give it time to acclimize before releasing it to labeling. dealers choice.
re: the soft spot. that is a wall thickness issue. there you might get some benefit from switching to a better grade (i.e. thicker wall size). but you don’t want to go too thick (causes other problems).
note: switching what your bottle is made of, is also likely to cause formulation-specific issues (particularly PET).
HDPE, is a good choice (unless you really really need clear).
Just learn to work with it.
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