The wine industry is making a move towards more eco-friendly solutions. About 91% of plastic packaging used to cushion bottles ends up in landfill or polluting the environment. Glass requires incredibly high temperatures to make, and fuel and plastic to transport and aluminium cans produce a lot of GHG emissions.
Santiago Navarro, founder and CEO of the British packaging company Garçon Wines has designed and produced “a really disruptive bottle.” It is made of recycled PET, but the innovation comes at its shape: it holds 750 ml of wine, but unlike glass bottles, it’s flat. In Bordeaux and Burgundy versions, it packs tightly into cartons without need of additional packaging, fitting 91% more product on a shipping pallet. Lined with a nylon-based oxygen barrier inserted between its walls, the flat bottle gives up to 21 months of shelf life.
Australia’s Accolade Wines was an early adopter of Navarro’s bottle. U.S. companies can try it when Navarro opens a bottling facility outside of Los Angeles in 2022.
Other beverage giants are moving in the same direction. PepsiCo has promised 100% renewable packaging and Bacardi will replace 80 million plastic bottles with an exclusive material. The material, manufactured by Danimer Scientific, is made by fermenting canola and other seed oils, the Nodax PHC biopolymer biodegrades in any environment containing microorganisms. After that, it will share the design with other companies.
Even in containers designed to lower plastic use, plastic is involved. Frugalpac’s paper Frugal Bottle is similar to a bag-in-box but moulded with heat and moisture into shape. The Bordeaux-style bottle is 94 percent chemical-free, recycled paperboard fused with water-based glue. Five times lighter than an average glass bottle, it resists spills, humidity, and breakage from a five-foot drop, giving beverages a 12-month shelf life. The polyethylene metallised polyester laminate film inside it can be removed and recycled. The Frugal Bottle’s carbon footprint is 84 percent smaller than that of glass. Local printers can truck paperboard sheets to wineries or bulk-wine packers to be assembled on Frugalpac equipment, getting five times the “bottles” onto trucks. Italian winery Cantina Goccia, British gin maker Silent Pool, Scotland’s NB Distillery, and a Japanese sake brand are among early customers.
Sustainable Swedish paper company BillerudKorsnäs and Austrian plastics manufacturer ALPLA have formed the Paper Bottle Company, and Paboco is also creating a bottle using FSC-certified paper and a plastic-film liner for a 65% reduction in plastic content.
Other brands are innovating with fibre for secondary packaging. Corona introduced a recycled barley-straw six-pack holder, and the Eco Six Pack Ring, E6PR, that Florida’s Saltwater Brewery launched in 2018. Made of renewable fibres from food production, the product breaks down in compost bins.
France’s Green Gen Technologies, has developed a bottle made of woven flax fused at low temperatures with a bio-resin to create a durable composite. It requires only a tenth of the heat of glass and less than a third of glass’s weight, but sturdy enough to withstand a 20-story fall. They are also innovating closures, fusing grape residue from wine production into a composite that can replace 40% of the plastic in a T-top.
