Beer brand stays fresh with four-litre kegs

International beer brands Heineken and Amstel have been launched in a new four litre PET keg with an integral tap supplied by APPE. 

The new ‘Tapje’ keg is a small draft-beer system, which consumers can use at home. It offers an more cost-effective alternative to the traditional crate of beer, with greater flexibility for consumers. It has been launched in the Netherlands prior to introduction into other markets.

The Tapje features APPE’s proprietary monoBLOX barrier technology with oxygen scavengers – a robust container with superior barrier performance to keep out oxygen while keeping in the carbonation.

Once open the beer remains fresh for 30 days.

The Tapje is ready for use after being cooled for ten hours in a refrigerator.  A separate beer cooler is available which reduces this time to an hour.  A coloured indicator on the front of the keg shows when the beer has reached the correct temperature for consumption
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Heineken chose to work with APPE because of the company’s dedicated research and development centre, which has extensive experience in the development of complex packaging solutions; this included bottle and preform development as well as the closing disk, all of which took into consideration the downstream assembling operations at Heineken.

About APPE

APPE, formerly known as Artenius PET Packaging Europe, is a division of La Seda de Barcelona (LSB). The company is a market-leader in the design and manufacture of PET preforms, bottles and containers for a wide variety of end markets including food, drinks, personal care and household products. With manufacturing facilities in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Morocco, Turkey and Greece, APPE is able to offer customers both a localised and pan-European service. APPE is also the European leader in the recycling of PET containers and the largest producer of high quality food grade rPET resin.

1 August 2011 - Felicity Murray