…sorry manny…
scuffs the dirt with his shoe
Oh, and my link works for me.
Just returned from the pantry-- 46 oz. V8 in a plastic bottle. No air.
My WAG: They overfill the bottles, cap them, then pasteurize them.
Whammo, images work better when they have a filename like JPG or GIF. 
Ahhh… I remember now. Those Welchs juice bottles. The way you do that is to fill the container to almost it’s brim, then suck the air out while you slap the cap on. The juice’s pressure is reduced just a little bit, so when you pop the cap, air rushes in and compresses the juice a little, and it won’t spill out anymore. There are different methods of sucking out the air. In general, you have a robotic arm kinda thingy that holds on to the bottle top, creates an air tight seal, then opens a valve within the seal to a vacuum that sucks out the air, and finally slap on a cap, all within a second or two. As mentioned above, keeping your juice away from air will preserve it longer.
grumble grumble…
http://www.geocities.com/b_line12/juice.jpg
Though to be fair it IS sunny delight… not juice.
- Now I’m not suggesting that this is how they do it,* but sealing the bottle without air is not as hard as most of the posts in this would suggest. Simply cap the bottle while they’re both submerged in a tank of juice – no air in the bottle, no air in the cap, no air at all.
But then the bottle would get all sticky from the juice.
Not if it is dunked in hot water after capping (maybe even soapy hot water, then rinsed). Then the label goes on. No sticky mess.
Does somebody want to wade through some of this? This is what came up from a Google search under “plastic juice bottling seal”.
This is on aseptic packaging; I’m not sure if it’s applicable.
http://www.packworld.com/hottopics/aseptic.html
There are references in some of the articles to blow-molding PET bottles, but there aren’t enough years in my life for me to go through the whole website and see if it tells how they put the caps on without including air (or even whether that’s the packaging the OP is talking about.)
http://www.packagingdigest.com/articles/199911/74.html
This http://www.packagingdigest.com/articles/199909/36.html says this:
Not sure if it’s applicable, either–I have to go and I don’t have time to read the whole thing.
Try adding the word “packaging” to the search. Happy New Year, everybody! 
I checked the pantry, Ocean Spray Cranberry juice - no air, V-8 Vegetable Juice, spicy hot - no air, Cambells Tomato juice in a glass container - air.
Now, I must mix something nice with the V-8 spicy hot. The unopened Tanquery vodka bottle had a layer of air, the layer of air is now larger than it previously was.
Ah yes, but then when you open the bottle, no expansion of the container would occur. You’d have a completely full, hard to pour bottle of juice.
They’d never do it that way. Dipping bottles in the product wouldn’t do. These containers are filled on a bottling line. The product arrives at the filler from a sterile source. It is more likely that the bottles emerge from the filler with a half inch or so of headspace and get a slight squeeqe in the capper to raise the level of the product so it slightly overflows and is then capped in that position. Then the product has to be sterilized so it won’t spoil. This involves heating it some way. Possibly a hot water bath which would kill all the cooties and clean up any residue from the capping operation. Then the containers could be labeled and sent to a case packer. I used to work in a packaging plant, but we didn’t package wet products, only powders like instant coffee and “Tang” type products, so I could be full of shit here.
galen’s got it.
I hold in my hand a plastic 750ml bottle of McCormick American Blended Whiskey,unopened (not for long),upended, no air (not for long).
My work is never done.
I suspect it has something to do with the process of heating the product before sealing the bottle. As anybody who has ever done any home canning knows, you need to place the heated product into bottles & cap the bottles before the content cools. As the contents begin to cool, its volume contracts creating a localized low pressure. The higher pressure outside the bottle forces the sides of the plastic bottle inward, forcing some displaced liquid into the air gap near the lid/cap.
When you open the bottle, you hear the characteristic sound of air rushing in to equalize pressure, and voilà! There’s your air bubble. I suspect you could prove this by just uncapping & recapping one of your mysterious “airless” bottles.
Attrayant,
Your description is definitely how canning works but I’m not certain that it can explain everything here. I agree that heating, capping, cooling, and the container contracting will result in a smaller airspace in a room temp bottle compared to a red hot one. But, we’re talking NO air. Zero. Zilch.
Maybe you’d argue that the bottles are filled nearly to the top with hot juices (Ooh, that sounds nice) so that when capped and cooled there is no APPARENT air. That may be. But when you open the bottles and the pressure equilibrates to ambient, there’s a fair-sized airspace. Since presumably, in your model, the bottles are filled at ambient pressure, the size of the airspace is similar to that upon filling. I think it’s too much air to contract down to nothing or nearly nothing (especially since the elastic nature of the container will resist the air’s contraction).
Personally I favor filling nearly to the top, and slightly squeezing (or evacuating) the bottle before capping.
One more thing, everyone seems sure that the rationale for the change in beverage packaging is to extend the juices shelf life. But are there any industry sources out there that can verify this? There may be important considerations we are overlooking.
Oh fine. I’m going to get a bottle of juice & see what the hell everybody’s talking about.
:Stomps off in a huff:
My WAG as to why they would do this has nothing to do with shelf life, and a whole lot to do with the buyers perception. Take two bottles of the same airless juice, same size. Now open one of them, let the air rush in, and put the cap back on. Which one has more juice in it? Of course they both have the same amount of juice in them, but if you show the bottles to someone that didn’t see you let the air into one of them they would tell you that the unopened one has more juice in it. It is the manufacturers way of tricking you into thinking you have more juice.
Manufacturers are cutting down on the actual amount of product that you buy but are still charging the same price. You don’t notice this because of clever packaging design. Just changing the shape of a bottle can change the consumer’s perception of just how much product they are getting, even if there is exactly the same amount in each bottle.
I answer alot of surveys and not too long ago I did one about Ocean Spray juices. No change in the juice, just a different bottle design. They sent me a huge bottle of cranberry juice in the new bottle design. They were interested in the grip of the bottle, if it was easier to pour, etc. but alot of the questions centered on whether or not I thought there was more juice in this particular bottle. They take packaging design very seriously and sent me a postage paid box to send the empty bottle back to them. They then sent me a $15 check just for returning the empty bottle.
I think it’s simpler than that. Glass containers have ‘air’, plastic do not (mostly.)
Why? In both cases the bottle contains juice and a near vacuum. In a glass bottle, the bottle does not deform and the ‘air space’ remains clearly visible. In a plastic bottle, the bottle sucks in a little and the air space disappears.
It could be that glass and plastic bottles are filled in exactly the same way but the flexibility of plastic bottles closes the air gap.
That being said, I don’t know if the vacuum is caused by a cuff fitting on the bottle and evacuating, or by hot water vapor (steam) which displaces all the air and then condenses leaving a vacuum, or some other mechanism. It just doesn’t seem that surprising given a) the vacuum seal on many glass containers (button pops up when seal is broken) and b) the flexibility of glass vs. plastic containers.
Another WAG…
The robotic arm gripping the flexible platic bottle seems more likely. Maybe there is no “shelf life” reason for it. Maybe it’s just older machines converted for platic bottle use that grip the platic bottles too tight during capping. Or maybe it’s unavoidable to grip the platic bottle too tight when capping. But you’d think they get tired of small amounts of liquid sloshing out on the assembly line and would fix it.
Now I’m going to be obsessed with inverting juice bottles at the store. As if folks don’t think I’m weird enough as it is…