Hot filling and cold filling

2020-06-27

Some new customers asked the difference between beverage hot filling bottle and cold filling bottle recently, the answer may be found from the introduction of the two different filling technologies below:

	Hot filling	Cold filling
Bottle and quality Requirements	Crystallized hot filling PET bottle is required. (be able to bear 85℃-90℃ bottle no deform) and heat resisting cap	Ordinary PET bottle (max. 60℃ ) and standard cap
Beverage material Requirements	Be able to keep a long period and need to add preservatives	Beverage material need to be UHT sterilization, then cool down to normal temperature
PET bottle sterilization	To rinsing with ozone water or Chlorine water	To be immersed in disinfectant or spray sterilization
Bottle cap sterilization	To use UV light or Chlorine water	To be immersed in disinfectant or spray sterilization
Filling workshop	Level 100,000 purification	Level 1,000,000 purification filling zone, preparing workshop 10,000 level, almost no microorganism
Filling equipment	Filling system with outer recycle, with CIP	Non-contacting filling, with complete CIP and SIP system, strict requirements for filling zone of packing material transferring
After filling	Bottle turn-over conveyor line and spray cooling equipment is needed.	No after filling treatment
Actual Operation	Technology surrounding operation simple, QC not too strict	Technology surrounding operation comprehensive, QC extremely strict
Operation risk	Small	Big
Influence to product taste	A certain influence	Tiny influence

From above table, we can get to know the 2 filling styles have different requirements to the PET bottle. Hot filling bottle has features as below:

More thickness, need high crystallization to enhance heat stability, high stretching rate to make bottle hard, bottle design with strong ribs to prevent from shrinking, bottle neck need to be crystallized.