The application of polyethylene (PE) materials in beverage bottle caps has the following significant advantages, making it the mainstream choice in the industry:
1. Excellent sealing performance**
Leak-proof design: PE's high ductility and elasticity enable it to fit tightly to the bottle mouth, effectively preventing liquid leakage and gas penetration (such as CO₂ escape from carbonated beverages).
Long-term preservation: Blocking external moisture and oxygen, extending the shelf life of beverages (especially for perishable products such as juice and dairy products).
2. Lightweight and economical
Reduced transportation costs: The density is only 0.91-0.96 g/cm³, which is more than 60% lighter than traditional metal caps, significantly reducing logistics energy consumption.
Raw material cost advantage: PE is about 10-15% lower than PP (polypropylene), and the processing energy consumption is low, which is suitable for large-scale production (a single-day output can reach millions).
3. Processing adaptability
Injection molding efficiency: Melting point range 110-130℃, can achieve 3-5 seconds/mold molding cycle on high-speed injection molding machine.
Thread precision control: Stable shrinkage rate (1.5-3%), can accurately replicate the mold thread structure, and ensure the opening torque is in the ideal range of 0.7-2.2 N·m.
4. Safety compliance
Food grade certification: Complies with FDA 21 CFR 177.1520 and EU 10/2011 standards, no risk of plasticizer migration (such as DEHP detection limit <0.1 ppm).
Chemical inertness: Acid and alkali resistant (stable in pH 2-12 range), does not react with beverage ingredients, and maintains a pure taste.
5. User experience optimization
Opening convenience: The anti-theft ring structure is realized through the broken connecting bridge design, and the opening force is controlled within the range of 15-30N (except for child safety packaging).
Silent opening: Compared with the metal cap of the glass bottle, the opening noise is reduced by more than 40 decibels.
6. Environmentally friendly characteristics
Recycling convenience: It is a compatible material in the PET bottle recycling system, and the existing sorting equipment can effectively separate it (density flotation threshold 1.0 g/cm³).
Low-carbon production: The carbon footprint of each thousand PE bottle caps is 8.2kg CO₂ equivalent lower than that of aluminum caps (data source: Life Cycle Assessment by Plastics Europe).
7. Functional scalability
Smart packaging: RFID tags can be integrated through the co-injection process (such as NXP UCODE 7 chip embedding) to achieve anti-counterfeiting traceability.
Color customization: Only 1-2% of masterbatch is needed to achieve more than 90% of Pantone's color gamut coverage.
Industry data reference: In 2023, PE accounted for 58% of the global beverage bottle cap market (Grand View Research data), with an annual output of more than 450 billion, of which 30% used HDPE (high-density polyethylene) for carbonated beverage caps and 70% used LDPE (low-density polyethylene) for mineral water caps.
The balance between cost, performance and sustainability of this material combination has enabled it to continue to dominate innovation in the packaging field.
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