Gigliotti quickly arranged for a single eight-mold BDS machine to be converted to the making of lightweight blow-molded ten-ounce bottles (the same external dimensions as the current 8-ounce glass Coke bottles).  The first bottles for these tests were blown in January 1970 and filled in March 1970 for public market tests.

In 1972, based on the successful completion of the Providence six-step testing program, Monsanto began building the three factories, in South Windsor, CT, Havre De Gras, Maryland, and Chicago, Illinois.  These plants began commercial production in 1975, and the bottle and Coca-Cola's reaction was enthusiastically successful.

In June 1976, while they were receiving honors and awards in Chicago for the successful LOPAC program, Michael advised Mr. Throdall, Corporate Vice President for Technology, that he intended to retire from Monsanto in January of 1977.   He would, at Monsanto's request, provide whatever assistance Monsanto wished to install his successor as Director of Research & Development for the new Bottle Division and continue the LOPAC market expansions.  Michael then put his intention in writing to Virgil Waggoner, who, in 1975, had been named a Corporate Vice President and General Manager of the new Carbonated Beverage Product Division of Monsanto.

In February 1977 the Carbonated Beverage Products Division held a Divisional Executive Committee Meeting in Chicago, focused on the introduction into the Chicago market of refillable/returnable quart-sized Coke bottles which had already been manufactured at the South Windsor plant.  During this meeting Waggoner and the Division's Executive Group (including Gigliotti) received word that the Commissioner of the FDA had issued a press release indicating that the FDA was rejecting a food-additive application from Sohio, who requested approval of a Barex (ABS) bottle for carbonated beverages.  The reasons were that this application was only experimental and, someday, acrylonitrile would be found to be unsafe for human consumption.  By this time several hundred million Monsanto-Coke LOPAC bottles has already been sold. 

The anti-plastics environmental groups immediately began an anti-Coke campaign, picketing supermarkets.  In the next week, realizing that the Coca-Cola image would rapidly be destroyed by this negative anti-plastic campaign, Monsanto shut down its bottle plants and Coca-Cola withdrew the bottles from the market.  Ironically, even though the original LOPAC Coca-Cola bottles had not shown any migration problems, and were only "guilty by association,"� it took another seven years for the FDA to re-approve the Cycle-Safe bottle made from the LOPAC resin.