Lightweight Containers launch seeks to cater to growing alcohol-free market
13 Nov 2018 --- Lightweight Containers, producer of the PET kegs KeyKeg and UniKeg, has launched two new additions: A non-alcoholic fitting and a manual dispensing unit for “at-home use,” today at BrauBeviale, in Nuremberg, Germany.
“The non-alcoholic market is growing, showing the highest growth rate in the beer industry,” Annemieke Hartman, Chief Commercial Officer at Lightweight Containers, tells PackagingInsights.
Indeed, Innova Market Insights data has also noted an increase in low-alcohol marketing, with late Millennials and young professionals increasing their intake of low alcoholic enjoyment, as well as the craft beer scene increasingly expanding into the non-alcoholic market.
“Of course, beer brewers do not want to have non-alcoholic and alcoholic beers dispensed out of the same coupler behind the bar,” adds Hartman.
The company’s second release will seek to make at-home drinks in kegs more accessible to consumers.
non-alcoholic fitting.
“We will also be introducing a manual dispensing unit. This means that as a consumer, if you have a party, you can dispense the beer in a ten-liter keg, without making a big investment in dispensing equipment, ” she says.
Lightweight Containers continues to innovate across geographic, category and sustainability lines. Measures, such as the potential introduction of UK tax on plastics containing less than 30 percent recycled content, increase the pressure on companies to be sustainable. Lightweight Containers appears to be in good standing to lead the category in 2020 since its KeyKegs and UniKegs contain a high level of recycled content. They are one-way packaging systems for beer, but also kombucha and cold or nitro coffee, but after use, they can increasingly be recycled into new kegs.
As a result of its partnership with OneCircle, used KeyKegs and UniKegs are collected to be processed, separated and the materials re-used in high-end applications, increasing the total volume of recycled sets of KeyKegs and UniKegs.
By Laxmi Haigh
