As Canada’s leading single-serve fruit juice company, Toronto-based Alfresh Beverages could have rested on its laurels. Instead, the company decided to preempt the competition and switch to PET bottles with oxygen scavengers to satisfy on-the-go consumers and safety-conscious retailers.

Nine drink flavors, marketed under the Everfresh brand in Canada and Fairlee in the U.S., recently switched from glass bottles to PET, a move that already has paid off with new sales to convenience stores, cafeterias and vending-machine operators. Many of those clients were reluctant to stock glass containers, says Gary Krupa, marketing director. Lighter-weight PET bottles also have reduced U.S. distribution costs by 10 percent.

Krupa worked with Crown Cork & Seal Co.’s Constar division to find packaging for a hot-filled product, made without preservatives, with a 12-month shelf life. Alfresh uses a three-layer, 16-oz. bottle with Constar’s Oxbar sandwiched between an inner and outer layer of polyethylene terephthalate. Oxbar is a nylon and cobalt catalyst salt that scavenges oxygen. The container is topped by a 43-mm polypropylene cap with a thermoplastic elastomer liner to maintain the hermetic seal.