“Cheers!” to the Flat Plastic Wine Bottle That’s Perfect for Shipping!

“Cheers!” to the Flat Plastic Wine Bottle That’s Perfect for Shipping!

Posted on November 28, 2018 by in News, Uncategorized with no comments

The wine bottle may be nothing new, but a new “flattened” PET bottle is taking the U.K. by storm, and has even been recognized by Dow as a Diamond finalist in it’s 2018 Awards for Packaging Innovation.

The demand for this new bottle came from a simple problem: The wine industry was losing nearly 100 million dollars a year in failed home deliveries. With the rise of e-commerce this was a problem that was only going to get bigger. “The idea was catalyzed by the need to solve a specific, clear problem of home delivery in the U.K.” said Santiago Navarro, the CEO and Co-Foudner of Garçon Wines.

To solve this problem Garçon Wines explored many options, with an early focus on a bag-in-a-box solution. Soon Navarro realized that this obvious solution was missing something…”They completely missed the emotional benefits of a vessel that looked beautiful enough that it would be proudly placed on a dining table,” he said.

It took weeks, but finally Navarro came up with the idea to flatten the bottle, but preserve the shape and proportions of the traditional Bordeaux wine bottle. Navarro also wanted the bottle to be made of 100% recycled PET. To bring this idea to life Garçon Wines worked with RPC M&H plastics. One problem they had to overcome is the cloudy, grey color that 100% recycled PET bottles would take on. Most beverages shyed away from using anything over 50% recyled material to avoid this off-putting color. The solution in this case was to make the bottles an olive or pink color to mimic their glass counterparts.

 

While the final bottle’s shelf life does not match the longevity of a traditional glass bottle, the new shape makes for easy packaging that fits through the traditional mail slots found on U.K. homes. The square shape also made packaging in boxes easier, with less wasted space. Now wine lovers in the U.K. will be much less likely to miss their next shipment of their favorite wine.

Navarro believes that U.K. letterbox delivery is “really just the tip of the iceberg…We’ve secured our intellectual property for flat bottles across 35 of the main wine-consuming and producing countries, and we’ve got plans afoot to enter key wine and spirits markets,” So while the flat wine bottle may be limited to the U.K. for now, we can expect to see it on our side of the pond soon enough! Cheers!

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