Amcor introduces tethered cap for Vöslauer bottles

Amcor has equipped Vöslauer Mineralwasser with a tethered cap for the Austria-based water company’s bottles. The tethered cap opens at a wide angle and clicks into place to keep it away from the face, ensuring consumer convenience. 

Tethered caps are mandatory under the EU Single-Use Plastic Directive with the aim of reducing plastic cap pollution and increasing recycling rates. 

Sarah de la Mare, product line director for closures at Amcor Rigids Packaging Solutions International, says: “Closures play a critical role in drinks packaging, protecting the products and ensuring safe and easy access, and in this way can help to influence brand perceptions.”

The move expands Amcor and Vöslauer’s collaboration. The water company was the first in the country to adopt Amcor’s Secure Flip sports cap. The solution features a non-detachable tamper-evident band. 

Amcor also recently partnered with Wattwiller, a French premium water brand, to introduce a lightweight, ergonomically designed closure.

Tethered caps 

Tethered caps are a packaging solution introduced in the EU to reduce mounting evidence of plastic pollution. Other regions are now considering the solution to curb the adverse environmental impact of bottle caps.

Recently, the National Green Tribunal, India’s statutory ecological protection body, has taken up a petition investigating the environmental impact of single-use PET bottle lids. 

The petition argued that while plastic bottles are covered under existing waste management regulations, bottle caps are often left unrecycled, causing environmental pollution.

On the one-year anniversary of the implementation of tethered caps in the EU, Packaging Insights explored how design experience is central to bottle top changes, while a Netherlands-based environmental activist group reported a decrease in the number of caps littered in the environment.