Incredibly simple, yet devilishly clever this clever little device saves bottled produce from spoiling and its sales figures are well into the millions.
Incredibly simple, yet devilishly clever this clever little device saves bottled produce from spoiling and its sales figures are well into the millions.
The ViscoDisc is a thin piece of plastic that at first glance looks something like an enlarged snowflake. Yet it is revolutionising the packaging industry and was invented by a man who lives right here in Grahamstown.
Being trained in packaging design, Richard Hopkins noticed that quite often bottled produce such as peppers, olives and pickled onions contained a few spoiled pieces protruding above the level of the liquid in the bottle.
The spoiling is caused by oxidisation once the pepper or other item rose above the brine (salty water) in the bottle. Hopkins says that when containers loaded with thousands of bottles of produce are exported, they are subject to quality checks in the importing country.
If one bottle is found to contain discoloured or spoiled produce, the entire container load is rejected, causing a substantial loss to the exporter. This illustrates how important it is to have perfect output when exporting bottled foodstuffs. so he put his mind to finding a way of preventing the produce from rising too high above the preserving liquid into the shoulder of the glass container.
Bottled fresh produce such as beetroot and patty pans are sold according to drained weight, in other words the weight of the produce before the brine is added to the container. The drained weight of the contents is printed on the label of the bottle.
When the produce is stuffed into the bottle as high as possible without causing any bruising, its actual weight before the preserving liquid is added is always well above the specified drained weight. The packaging machines then fill the glass jar with brine or oil and it si then auto-capped.
Problems arise when the produce absorbs a certain amount of the liquid causing the level of the liquid in the bottle to drop. This leaves the top layer of the produce high and dry and therefore vulnerable to oxidisation.
This problem is exacerbated with most bottled produce such as patty pans (bottled here in Grahamstown) because they float. The patty pans at the bottom and middle of the glass bottle tend to rise and push the top layers up to break the surface of the brine.
The ViscoDisc insert makes it is possible to exceed the drained weight of the produce without filling each bottle right to the top of the container. This enables the packaging company to fill more bottles by reducing wastage. Hopkins demonstrated for Grocott’s Mail how he could fill an entire jar of patty pans using only the excess produce from seven jars that had been filled to the top.
The ViscoDisc insert has been recognised by the South African packaging industry, winning silver medals in both the components and export categories of the prestigious Institute of Packaging SA Gold Pack Awards 2005 competition. On the international stage, the insert won the 2005 World Star for innovative packaging from the World Packaging Organisation.
Looking to the future, Hopkins plans to set up export facilities to the UK, the USA and other countries. He is also planning to market home kits for people who have their own home industry bottling business. The kits will include a manual inserter and inserts of four different sizes.
