Graphic Packaging: Soft drinks brands can cut glass breakage with Tite-Pak
![Greg McKenna is director of sales at Graphic Packaging's Specialty Beverage Packaging division](/var/wrbm_gb_food_pharma/storage/images/_aliases/wrbm_large/2/3/0/8/278032-1-eng-GB/Graphic-Packaging-Soft-drinks-brands-can-cut-glass-breakage-Tite-Pak.png)
Greg McKenna, director of sales, specialty beverage packaging at Graphic Packaging, tells BeverageDaily.com at Pack Expo 2014: “There’s been a lot of light-weighting with glass in the market over the last few years – partitions have been removed to reduce cost.
“What we’re doing with this package is taking the existing material in the bottom of the carton and putting it to use – so customers get the benefit: reduce glass breakage, generate bottom line savings,” McKenna adds.
![yuengling](/var/wrbm_gb_food_pharma/storage/images/_aliases/large/7/1/6/4/124617-2-eng-GB/yuengling.png)
“Certainly in soft drinks there’s an opportunity for it. Currently, we’re focusing on the brewery business, but even beyond beverage in glass food products there are opportunities for Tite-Pak in the future,” he says.
Explaining in more detail how Tite-Pak works, McKenna says: “We did hundred and thousands of glass breakage tests, and learnt we had to make the package tight – so we make it undersize when we’re packing it, to get the glass to move as a single mass.”
“When the machine packs the bottles we engage a series of shark fins – they look like a fin – using a punch system to punch up from the bottom in between the heels of the glass, to tighten the package still further,” he adds.