Beer in plastic bottles. Yay.

According to the Nikkei Shimbun, Mitsubishi Heavy and Kirin Breweries have developed a machine that coats plastic bottles with diamond-like carbon, making them ten times more airtight and meaning they can now be used to hold beer without it going flat and yucky. Personally, we would rather die.

The machine costs Y400 mn and the sales target for 2004 is Y3 bn, so presumably they are expecting to sell 7.5 of them.

The first one is being delivered next June, so enjoy yourselves while you can. We imagine that happoshu (cheap low-malt beer) is going to be the stuff that gets into these bottles, though, and, er, we don't drink happoshu.

Nikkei article (Japanese).