Lightweighting, embossing and customization: Luxury glass takes center stage at London Packaging Week

25 Sep 2023 --- Luxury glass packaging products, especially for alcoholic beverages, were highlighted at this year’s London Packaging Week (September 21-22), UK, with companies presenting customized, lightweight, embossed and digitally designed bottles.

Businesses spotlighted the products as the industry looks to maintain and encourage support for glass packaging infrastructure, which – with sufficient collection and sorting – is an infinitely recyclable material. 

Melianthe Leeman, global innovation platform director for O-I Glass, a US-based container glass specialist, tells Packaging Insights that digitally printing designs onto glass does not impact recyclability and eliminates the need for substrates. 

“We are showcasing the next development in O-I Expressions, which was launched in 2019 to allow our customers to digitally print directly onto bottles, including transparent prints and 3D prints resembling glass embossing,” she says. 

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, we realized that personalization was going through deeper levels than what we had seen before and that consumers actually wanted to have a lot more unique bottles presented to them. So we worked with our partners to develop variable data printing as part of the digital printing offering.” 

The new line, branded O-I Expressions Signature, was conceived in answer to what the company says brings a 40% faster growth rate for brands with personalization than those without. 

Dekorglass emphasizes that glass design and decoration does not need to come as extra cost.Variable data printing
Leeman explains that O-I collaborated with its technology partners to overcome a range of technical challenges. These include ensuring the accuracy of reading the customer’s data, minimizing time delay in the print cycle, inspecting variably printed bottles and data protection.

“This is an exciting time to be in glass manufacture as the industry is developing more attractive and sustainable packaging at speed,” she says. 

“We see great opportunities for O-I: Expression Signature not just for premium and luxury special editions but also for global brands who can make one run of a common bottle shape then create culturally appropriate designs for different markets within the same print run.”

Depending on the color of the glass, O-I’s recycled content levels go up to 90%, Leeman says. 

Leightweighting and product protection 
Lukasz Marulski, a marketing specialist for Poland-based Dekorglass, which was previously a glass decorating company that moved into bottle production, tells us that the most important thing for brands to know is that decoration on spirit bottles does not have to be expensive.

“We need to know that decoration enhances brand visibility and that it has no impact on recyclability,” he says. 

“People don’t have to worry about bottles being destroyed in the supply chain because we’ve ensured that the products are more robust than they were in the past.” 

Josh Webster, marketing director for UK-based glass packager Croxsons, emphasizes that an important advantage of glass that packagers should be aware of is that no toxins or light seep through glass, meaning F&B products are assured against the taste and colorization changes that can occur with plastic and aluminum packaging. 

New generation of glass furnaces 
Over the next year, O-I says it will be focusing on installing Magma glass furnaces, which are more flexible and smaller than conventional applications and can be switched on and off easily. 

Leeman says this is a “revolution” in glass production, with the company installing a new facility in the US currently, which is set to go live next year. 

O-I is also working on lightweighting its glass by working with several brands to change designs and production processes, with a potential 25% cut to current levels. 

With the upcoming revisions to the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation on the horizon, Leeman says, “it’s important to keep in mind that we already have solutions that could reduce weights of bottles and increase recycled content so that they comply with the new regulations.”  

By Louis Gore-Langton