Anheuser-Busch tried to unveil a plastic beer bottle at its hospitality suite during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. But FDA clearance of homopolymer polyethylene naphthalate for food contact came about a month too late, A-B's Norm Nieder explains. "We had a large hospitality suite at the Olympics and we thought that if we could develop a package meeting our quality needs, we could get a very broad spectrum of exposure, even international exposure. Lots of press, a lot of activity, almost a captive test market if you will. "The bottle we had in mind was homopolymer PEN with [an epoxy-amine] barrier coating. At the time, late 1995, everybody and their mother was telling us that by Thanksgiving FDA would approve the use of homopolymer PEN in the U.S. for food contact. But they didn't do it in time and our window of opportunity passed." The regulation permitting use of PEN homopolymer for food packaging was published in the Federal Register on April 4, 1996. Still not approved for food contact, however, are PEN copolymers and PET/PEN blends.
