Supermarket Ties Mean PET Bottle Is Set For Widespread Adoption

The packaging specialist Alpla, in collaboration with the Austrian winery Wegenstein, has developed a PET wine bottle.

Reading time: 45s

The PET bottles from Alpla (Photo: Alpla)
The PET bottles from Alpla (Photo: Alpla)

A PET wine bottle offers numerous advantages, from its recyclability and lightweight nature to its resemblance to traditional glass bottles. In collaboration with the Wegenstein winery, where the bottle is already in use, packaging specialist Alpla has developed such a PET bottle. The advantages are significant: The bottle can be entirely made from PET recycling material. Additionally, weighing only 50g, it is about one-eighth the weight of glass, purportedly reducing the CO2 footprint by up to 50% (when using recycled PET) and resulting in up to 30% cost savings.

The bottle is already available in white and green, with capacities of 0.75 and 1 liter. Additionally, the first wine bottled in Alpla's PET bottle, sourced from Wegenstein winery, is already on the market in Austria.
 

Large volumes planned

The manufacturer's plans are ambitious. The internationally active company aims to reach several million bottles by 2025. A significant advantage resulting from the close collaboration with Wegenstein during development is the practical testing and easy adaptability. The new bottle is compatible with standard screw caps and fits into common wine bottling systems. Since Wegenstein closely collaborates with the Rewe Group and processes over 20m liters of wine in regular years, widespread adoption can quickly reach large volumes.

Interviews

Karsten Fuchs, the Head of Sales and Marketing at Verallia Germany, discusses with Meininger's International and its sister magazine Weinwirtschaft about lightweight glass, reusable packaging and the challenges posed by shortages in the glass market.

Reading time: 8m 30s

 

 

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