This glass bottle of T.N. Dickinson's Witch Hazel dates back to the early 1900's.

With its bluish cast, the new 16 oz. PET bottle is designed to billboard the new T.N. Dickinson's Witch Hazel label.

It's one of America's oldest, continuously produced products, dating to the 1870s when T.N. Dickinson, a Baptist minister who had made a fortune in Civil War uniforms, began brewing and distributing his witch hazel extract in eastern Connecticut. Today, T.N. Dickinson's® Witch Hazel Astringent remains the category's premier brand. The company's evolution from glass to plastic containers began with PVC bottles that proved to discolor over time, moved to PET bottles that varied in wall thickness, and ended with all-new PET bottles in 8- and 16-oz sizes that provide extreme clarity, durability, light weight and cost effectiveness.

"We initially used PVC bottles to replace glass," says Curt Strong, VP of Dickinson Brands, which distributes and markets the T.N. Dickinson's® line. "But while PVC bottles were lightweight, transparent and puncture resistant, we eventually found that PET was superior to PVC in clarity, color consistency and strength," Strong says.

Meeting filling line requirements critical to PET bottle success

To make the switch from PVC to PET containers, Dickinson Brands turned to a major blow molder to design and manufacture new 8 oz and 16 oz PET bottles. "We were redesigning our packaging and the company designed new bottles for us which had a fresh, streamlined appearance," Strong says. "Many loyal customers called, wrote or emailed to express their approval of our new package design."

However, problems arose on the filling lines. "Our first supplier of PET bottles had difficulty maintaining a consistent wall thickness and we experienced an increasing number of rejects and bottles which failed on the filling lines, resulting in reduced production. Finally," Strong says, "we called in another supplier of ours, Novapak Corporation, and asked them to develop a prototype PET bottle as quickly as possible."

Novapak employs a novel "2-stage injection-stretch blow molding" process for PET containers whereby "universal preforms" are injection molded separately from the blow molding of finished containers, eliminating the set-up time and tooling costs associated with concurrent injection molding and blow molding of dedicated preforms in single stage processes. The savings reportedly allows PET containers to be produced economically in smaller runs, allowing firms like Dickinson Brands to capitalize on PET's optical and physical characteristics.

According to David Clelland, design engineering manager at Novapak's Eatontown, New Jersey headquarters, the exceptional strength of PET is further enhanced when lower gram weight PET preforms are used vs. heavier gram PET preforms, resulting in increased stretching of the preform and orientation of PET molecules which actually increases the strength of the resulting container.

"Novapak was fast off the mark," Strong says. "We began test-filling initial prototypes of their new 16 oz bottles on our filling lines in less than a month."

Clelland explains that the bottle design process began with a small group from Novapak visiting the Dickinson Brands plant in eastern Connecticut to study the witch hazel filling lines. "Bottle design requires fine tuning," Clelland says. "You need to know the specs of the filling line's bottle indexers, the type of filling nozzles and fill speeds, the pressure applied to the bottle by the capper, and how the bottles will be labeled in order to design a container that will be compatible with filling lines."

Novapak selected one of its injection molded, universal preforms for blow molding of the T.N. Dickinson's container, a 16 oz. PET bottle with a prominent recessed panel designed to accommodate the new T.N. Dickinson's label.

Fine points of blow molding process maximize uniformity, quality

Clelland explains that the preform heating oven is equipped with slotted shields that allow selected areas of the preform to be heated preferentially, causing it to inflate within the blow mold tooling in a manner that produces uniform wall thicknesses, even on outside corners where blow molded products tend to thin-out.

"We asked Novapak to add a slight blue tint to the new bottle to compliment our new seven-color labeling," Strong says. The new bottle is labeled front and back, with the inside of the back label providing a splash graphic which serves as a background for the front label's brand name and slogans. "When filled, the bottles create a three-dimensional effect which highlights our pure, 100% natural witch hazel product," Strong says. "The transparency of PET combined with the superior construction of this package makes us confident that it will withstand the test of time."

Strong cites another benefit from the Novapak PET containers. "The bottles we receive are pristine," he says. "We purchase over a million of them annually and never see empties with scratches or abrasions. Rejects are virtually zero."

"The reason," says Clelland, "is that the bottles never have a chance to rub against one another in production, packing and shipping, eliminating the common causes of marring and blemishing of new containers."

Witch Hazel is distilled from an American shrub that grows throughout the northeastern U.S. The Puritans learned about witch hazel from Native Americans who boiled the stems of the bush, using the distillate as a remedy for sore muscles, inflammations, burns, rashes, insect bites and cuts, and administered witch hazel tea as a remedy for stomach aches, diarrhea, dysentery and other maladies. Today, T.N. Dickinson's Witch Hazel Astringent continues to be used in many of these same applications and is a medicine cabinet essential in millions of homes. An OTC pharmaceutical which is beneficial in treating minor cuts, scrapes and insect bites, and is popular as a shampoo rinse and aftershave, T.N. Dickinson's Witch Hazel Astringent is most widely used today as a soothing, all-natural skin care product. Especially effective for oily skin, witch hazel is a gentle astringent that cleans the skin, tightens pores and provides a refreshing, youthful feeling. For further information see: www.dickinsonbrands.com