The two-piece, 28-mm cap is an improvement over a more complex sports cap comprising five pieces that also held the liquid vitamin blend, says Luke Zakka, vice president of operations for NYSW Beverage Brands Inc., which produces VBlast. The new closure features a 6-mL reservoir that ensures the quality and year-long shelf life of the 5.5-mL vitamin blend. To maintain the potency of the vitamins, they are introduced to the spring water as the consumer opens the bottle.
“The new cap provides a better all-around consumer experience,” says Zakka. “The vitamin blend is dispensed with a single twist of the cap – there’s nothing complicated about it. The reservoir empties completely and quickly into the water, the opening is nice and big for a thirst-quenching swallow, and because our vitamins are in liquid form, there’s no grit or clumping like we see with dry formulations in other products.”
Zakka chooses not to identify the maker of the injection-molded two-piece cap. “We own the molds. It’s a challenging proposition. Other firms are using such caps to hold powdered components, but we believe we’re the first to put liquid in a dispensing cap like this.”
The new cap will be featured in the current line of 500-mLVBlast flavors – available in convenience stores, delis, groceries and sports clubs nationwide – as well as in line extensions that will be introduced soon, says Zakka. The company geared up for the introduction of the new closure by installing a new, high-speed cap filling machine supplied by Modern Packaging. The rotary-style machine, says Zakka, uses two filling nozzles, two “cinching heads,” and two feeders. It fills the 5.5-mL of liquid into one component of the cap and threads the second piece onto the filled piece. Then the filled cap is taken to the bottling line, where a capper supplied by Pack Leader applies caps to filled bottles.
