The proceedings of the Conference on Beverage Packaging (Fachtagung Getraenkeverpackung), held in Lahnstein on 26/27 January 2005, are summarized. Topics covered in the presentations include the influence of changing social and economic conditions on the German beer market, the development of new testing methods for evaluating the quality of containers, closures, labels and outer packaging, general improvements in the manufacture and decoration of glass bottles, a new phosphonate additive used in coatings to protect refillable glass bottles against scuffing, the state of the international beer market, the use of laser printed batch and date codes, radio frequency identification (RFID) transponder systems, etc., for batch tracing, new developments in equipment for applying plastic film labels, the additional factors influencing the labelling of PET bottles that do not affect glass bottles, the advantages and disadvantages of plastic (especially PET) beer bottles, the practicalities of PET bottle recycling and of the use of recycled PET, a comparison of the performance and properties of 4 different gas barrier enhancement technologies for PET bottles, dyes and other additives that can be mixed into PET, the permeation of oxygen and carbon dioxide through PET and related plastics and methods for measuring it, the PET bottling of mineral water and fruit juice and the prospects for developing new forms of beverage packaging.
