Packamama equips The Wine Society with low-carbon, eco-flat rPET bottles

26 Jul 2023 --- Packamama and international cooperation The Wine Society are collaborating to spread eco-flat wine bottles made of recycled PET (rPET) throughout the society members’ product ranges to reduce carbon emissions. 

The flat-pack bottles are lighter than glass bottles, weighing 63 g compared to an average of 460 g for glass bottles, resulting in a lower-carbon footprint and offering consumers greater convenience and portability through their space-saving design. 

Speaking to Packaging Insights, Santiago Navarro, CEO and founder of Packamama, says that the move toward eco-flat bottles in the wine industry is primarily motivated by environmental concerns rather than intentions to cut costs. 

“[The Wine Society’s] key focus is on making changes to their packaging to hit their carbon footprint reduction goals. As part of that, they have chosen two technologies (bag-in box and Packamama eco-flat bottles) that are scalable and make sense from a commercial perspective,” he says. 

“By using our Packamama eco-flat bottles, there will be cost savings made in the supply chain, but from a direct packaging perspective, there will be no cost savings at this trial volume stage.” 

But at large-scale production of 7-10 million bottles annually, the Packamama eco-flat bottle would offer cost and carbon savings, Navarro notes. 

The rPET eco-flat wine bottles.Shifting away from glass 
In May, The Wine Society released a report titled “Alternative Packaging for Wine,” which assessed a variety of wine packaging formats for sustainability measures via LCAs. 

The report found that while typical PET bottle formats did not have the lowest global warming potential compared to others in the LCAs covered in the review, they still had a significantly lower potential carbon footprint than single-use glass bottles.

“The word plastic packaging is too general a term to be insightful,” says Navarro. “We believe that the specific material we use, rPET, is best placed to offer wine a low-emissions future while being able to create attractive looking bottles.” 

“Switching to rPET packaging should be done while using smart design, as we do at Packamama, to stand out, look bigger, and be more engaging for consumers.” 

Glass challenges 
Navarro says the main challenge for the wine industry to move away from glass is that it has been the status quo for centuries. 

Humans are hard-wired to dislike change and avoid risk, he says. 

“We need to demonstrate that the risk of changing to our eco-flat bottle is manageable or negligible.” 

“Fortunately, we are increasingly able to show this by providing evidence of product-market fit, including listings with major players and brands and positive sales of wines in our bottle, even beating the identical wine in glass bottle packaging.”

“Most importantly, as the climate crisis worsens, organizations are seeing that the risk of inaction is far, far greater than the risk of taking considered [climate] action and making lower carbon emissions choices,” Navarro asserts. 

rPET price problems? 
Last year, UNESDA Soft Drinks Europe warned that rPET prices were becoming as expensive “as gold or white truffles.” The association called on the EU to prioritize access for beverage packaging producers, who create the majority of rPET on the market through deposit return schemes. 

But Navarro says the information Packamama has indicates otherwise and that rPET demand is slow and prices are dropping. 

“There are high stocks of rPET in Europe built up in the second half of 2022, and demand has not been as high as anticipated. This has been putting downward pressure on prices in 2023,” he says. 

“Sadly, the current market conditions indicate that too many organizations are still doing the easy thing, not the right thing, and using virgin PET.”

By Louis Gore-Langton