Trade Diary
| 04 February 2012 | ||
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Articles
Today, the wine industry can choose from a range of packaging solutions, be it glass, liquid cartons, aluminium, PET, bag-in-box or pouches. However, glass bottles currently dominate, making up 97% of the market.
In 2007, the UK consumed 1,360 million 75cl bottles of wine. This generated almost 40% of all household beverage packaging, contributing around half a million tonnes of packaging to the household waste stream.
The average weight of a wine bottle in the UK is currently 500g and the lightest bottle currently on the market weighs around 300g. This provides much opportunity for reducing weight and use of raw materials.
In 2006 WRAP launched the Container Lite project, which set out to prove that container weight could be reduced significantly by a combination of re-design or lightweighting an existing design without negatively affecting consumer perceptions, container performance or market share. The subsequent research suggested that consumers struggled to detect a 5-10% difference in glass weight. The final Container Lite report was published in April 2007, and as a result of the trials several lightweight containers are now on-shelf.
WRAP is working with the international wine sector to encourage the lightweighting of glass containers as a means of reducing the tonnage of glass in the waste stream through the Glassrite Wine project and has so far resulted in a reduction of over 28,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions which is the equivalent of taking 8,500 cars off the road.
It is sometimes assumed that lightweight bottles will break more easily than their heavier counterparts. However, GlassRite Wine has carried out experiments showing evidence that this is not the case. Research indicates that the use of modern bottling techniques and technology results in even better glass distribution often making lightweight bottles stronger than their heavier counterparts.
WRAP has also produced a ready reckoner to help retailers and brand owners identify the potential economic benefits for lightweighting based on their own data.
