Juicy Little Hugs

Dairy Foods,  June, 1998  by Jack Mans

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Little Hug juice drinks from Daily Juice Products is a market leader in its category.

Daily, which has been at its present location in Verona, Pa., since 1972, is one of the largest drink plants in the United States. It has 12 packaging lines in its 170,000-sq-ft plant. Nine run 24 hours a day seven days a week for much of the year to produce more than 300 million bottles of juice drinks annually.

All of these lines can run Daily's trademark Little Hugs, and most also run other products. Three other lines run Daily's cocktail mixes in 750ml and half-gal bottles as well as gallon containers of juice concentrate.

"Daily Juice Products started the single-serve drink category when we introduced Little Hugs in 1985," says V.P./Operations Don Bonaroti. "Since then we've grown into one of the largest manufacturers of these products in the United States."

The plant produces a wide variety of single-serve drink products, all packaged in HDPE bottles in sizes ranging from 8 to 16 oz. The largest volume product by far is Little Hugs (about 70%), which was the first single-serve fruit drink on the market when it was introduced in 1985.

Daily began producing 16-oz Big Hugs several years ago to go along with the original 8-oz Little Hugs. The two sizes together dominate this category in the U.S. with more than 45% market share, according to President David Bobers. Both sizes are available in eight flavors: fruit punch (the best seller), lemonade, orange, grape, cherry, lemon-lime, blue raspberry and strawberry.

Little Hugs are barrel-shaped containers with foil lids heat-sealed to the top. They are not labeled; ingredient information is printed on the lids.

Big Hugs are an elongated barrel shape with a more conventional tamper-evident plastic snap-on cap and stretch label. All of the other bottles at Daily also have stretch labels.

Daily has parlayed its expertise in single-serve drinks into a diversity of products. Other drinks are in bottles with either conventional tamper-evident caps or push/pull sport caps.

The newest product is a line of 10-oz drinks trade-named Body Slam, which are based on an agreement with the World Wrestling Federation. Introduced at last month's FMI show, the bottles have pictures of wrestling stars on their labels and on cardboard wrap-around carriers.

Continuous metering

Daily's juice drinks are composed of liquid sugar, water and water-based solutions containing preservatives and stabilizers and color and flavoring, respectively. In general, the only thing that changes for different flavors is the color/flavoring component.

The four components are metered into a common line and then flow through an in-line mixer at a rate of 110 gal per minute. Components are metered by individual pumps driven by a single vertical shaft with the motor at the top. Pumps are mounted horizontally off of the drive shaft in a "Christmas tree" arrangement.

Each pump is sized specifically for the volume it is to handle. Thus, the water and liquid sugar pumps are much larger than the other two pumps. Each pump is adjusted individually to meter the correct amount of product at a given drive speed. The beauty of this arrangement is that the proportions of components will always remain the same at any drive speed.

After passing through the in-line mixer, product enters the balance tank of a triple tube heat exchanger. It is heated to 190 [degrees] F, held for 16 seconds and then cooled to 90 [degrees] F. Product is diverted after the holding tube to a plate heat exchanger for regenerative preheating of the incoming drink by hot product before final cooling takes place in the triple tube.

Plant addition

Daily added 70,000 sq ft to the plant in 1991 and installed three state-of-the art packaging lines. The addition is composed of a 20,000-sq-ft processing, packaging and blowmolding area and 50,000 sq ft of warehouse.

Processing, filling and capping take place in a separate room, after which bottles are conveyed through a wall into the secondary packaging area. Each line has its own dedicated processing system consisting of two-head meter, in-line mixer and plate pasteurizer. Base mix containing water, liquid sugar and preservatives and stabilizers is made on the main system, and color/flavoring is added by the two-head unit.

Since the only real difference between products is the color/flavor component, the plant has developed an ingenious system to easily change from one to another. Twelve supply tanks containing different components are piped to a panel on each line equipped with quick-connect fittings with shutoff valves. Product is delivered from this panel to the metering pump by a hose. To change color/flavor components, the operator just shuts the valve on the component in use, unplugs the hose from the quick-connect fitting, plugs it into the new fitting and opens that valve.

Three production lines

The plant also installed six blowmolders when it built the addition. Four produce Little Hugs bottles and two produce bottles for other products. Bottles from the two non-Hugs machines pass through sleevers that apply stretch labels for the other products. The plant also has two blow molders in the older section of the plant where the other six packaging lines are located.