Soy sauce in glass bottles

Kikkoman Foods Europe B.V. relies on glass bottles: for bottling the well-known soy sauce, Krones supplied a filling line rated at 9,000 bph as a turnkey job. Kikkoman handles a total of five different glass bottles and one PET bottle as a small container. The soy sauce is also sold in 200-l barrels, 1000-l containers, 5-l and 20-l bag-in-box and 10-ml sachet, and in tanker trucks as well. The main brand, accounting for more than 90 %, is of course the classical Kikkoman soy sauce. Kikkoman also produces a sweet variant, plus the Teriyaki Marinade and Sukiyaki Sauce.
Because of its barrier characteristics, glass is quite important in the beverage and food industry. Its absolute resistance as to possible permeation between environment, bottle sidewall and inner atmosphere provides maximum safety for storing beverages that are sensitive to oxygen. Any other interaction between glass and product could be interdependent with the migration of beverage components into the bottle wall and – with returnable bottles – back into the product after cleaning. As glass behaves with absolute neutrality and does not yield any substances to the content of the container, nor absorb components thereof, the possibility of interactions can be ruled out.