The hardest leaks to catch are the ones that leave no visible trace. A micro-leak at a bottle cap or container neck can undermine shelf life and trigger complaints without anything looking wrong on the line. Antares Vision Group showed the system at ProPak Asia 2026 in Bangkok recently.
The technology reads gas rather than hunting for the hole. A laser beam passes through the headspace of a sealed container and measures pressure variations, flagging micro-leaks at the cap or neck as the pack moves through. The company says gas-specific laser tuning gives the method its precision, and that it runs non-destructively at any line speed while checking 100 percent of production.
Antares is positioning the system as broadly applicable to many applications, covering beverages, aerosols and liquid food across virtually any container format. It points to oxygen monitoring in the wine headspace to protect shelf life, non-contact detection of wear-related micro-leaks in returnable PET bottles, and aerosol inspection that replaces the traditional water bath test with a faster, lower-energy laser check.
Shown alongside the headspace system was a solution for modified atmosphere packaging in flexible packaging, such as pouches and trays. The company describes this as achieving full in-line leak detection without tracer gases, process changes or any reduction in line speed, something it characterizes as previously thought impractical for flexible packaging formats.
