Stress Engineering Contributes to Success of New Gatorade Bottle Design

MASON, Ohio – Pepsi’s new Gatorade bottle, also known as “Kenny,” won the 26th DuPont Packaging Award for Responsible Packaging. Stress Engineering Services and the design firm Tether were named as project contributors alongside Pepsi.  From the initial design concept created by Tether, the experts at Stress Engineering optimized the design virtually using state-of-the-art modeling & simulation.

The new bottle is 13 percent lighter and 25 percent stronger than the previous bottle. The hot-fill bottle features a vacuum panel in the base, rather than the sides, and a series of structural ribs that prevent deformation during and after the hot-filling process. The significant increase in bottle strength allowed Pepsi to move from shipping the bottles fully enclosed in corrugated bliss cases to shrink-wrapped trays, which enabled a 50 percent reduction of corrugated materials used for delivery.

A total of 16 awards were at the 26th DuPont Awards for Packaging Innovation held in May.  This year, the program received nearly 200 entries from 31 countries, marking the second-highest number of entries and broadest reach in the program’s 26-year history. The DuPont Packaging Award is the industry’s longest-running, global, independently judged competition highlighting innovative packaging solutions and collaboration throughout the value chain.

Since 1972, Stress Engineering Services has been providing clients with the utmost in engineering methods, advanced technology, and innovative applications. Our areas of expertise include package concept and design, plastics conversion, structural analysis and testing, closures, manufacturing system evaluation, transportation and distribution, troubleshooting, and failure analysis. In addition to developing and optimizing package designs for performance and value, we have a wide range of skills related to development, reliability evaluation, and troubleshooting of packaging line equipment.