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Pros and cons of sustainable wine packaging formats

An estimated 46% of total greenhouse gas emissions between picking grapes and bottling comes from glass production*.

While most don’t think glass bottles will ever be replaced by alternative materials entirely, there are plenty of manufacturers looking at ways to prevent shipping glass around the world.

Glass bottles can weigh almost half a kilogram when empty and most wine is drunk young – within a year. So what are the alternatives?

While the options for transporting in bulk are improving, some still fear for its impact on wine quality and securing a bottler at source can be impractical if exporting to many markets.

Another option is to look at lowering the carbon footprint of the bottle. But every packaging material has its downsides – not least of which being the risk people won’t want to buy it.

“Any tweak you make [to a bottle] is an immediate de-spec of a product,” says Tom Hanson-Smith, associate director at Journey’s End, which launched a wine range in Frugal Bottles in 2023. 

He says a bottle looking and feeling like wine is critical: “We are triggered to buy based on familiarity and comfort. There’s a huge element of psychology that comes into play.”

Lightweight glass

Glass is often still considered a mark of quality by shoppers, so reducing the weight of bottles can be a step towards reducing emissions from transport and production, without losing that sense of it being ‘good’.

Some producers only use lighter glass for their entry-level ranges, while keeping the traditional heavy bottle for their top ranges.

Italian winery Alois Lageder has been reducing the weight of its glass bottles gradually since 2021, when it worked with a glass supplier to create its ‘Summa’ bottle for its entire range – challenging the notion that heavy equals quality.

Lageder’s first Summa bottle reduced the weight of the company’s bottles from 650g to 450g. Since 2023, it has been using a 420g bottle (which has not been patented to allow other wineries to use the design). Lageder estimates the latest model reduces its glass consumption from 512 tons of glass with the old 650g bottle, to 398 tons.

Close up of a bottle of wine top
Alois Lageder’s lightweight Summa bottle uses paper strips instead of foil caps. Credit: Alois Lageder

It has also stopped using aluminium screw caps and replaced the zinc capsules on cork-closure bottles with paper ribbons (pictured left). These moves, Lageder estimates, reduce its use of zinc alloy and alumimium by five tons a year, to be replaced with 180kg of paper.

Sparkling bottles are trickier to make lighter, given the pressure they need to withstand.

Champagne Telmont, majority owned by Rémy Cointreau, worked with French glass manufacturer Verallia to reduce the weight of its bottles to 800g. Like Lageder, the research and innovation is open source.

Telmont calculates glass production is one of the main sources of indirect CO2 emissions for a Champagne house – forming 24% of Maison Telmont’s total emissions.

President Ludovic du Plessis says an average Champagne bottle weighs 835g, while bespoke bottles can weigh upwards of 900g. He plans to switch 100% of Telmont’s range into the 800 bottle by 2025.

“We have recently confirmed that the scientific tests on the 800g bottle are positive. The change from 835 to 800 grams has no impact on the bottle’s mechanical strength,” du Plessis says.

“This is incredible news for Champagne. Imagine if the entire Champagne region adopted this new super-light bottle, the CO2 reduction would be considerable.” He adds it could be possible to go lighter “now we know that 800g is possible”.

Telmont is planning to extend its “lightweighting approach” to other formats, including reducing its half-bottle from 500g to 460g and launching tests on magnums, which could reduce the bottle weight from 1,730g to 1,600g.

Telmont has also axed its gift boxes – a common non-negotiable for a luxury wine brand like a Champagne house. “The best packaging is no packaging. We make Champagne. We don’t make gift boxes. Just by doing that you reduce the carbon footprint of each bottle produced by 8% – it’s massive,” du Plessis said.

Plastic bottles – round & flat

No matter the format, many glass alternatives contain a level of plastic. It’s shatterproof, cheap to produce, recyclable – PET can be recycled infinitely, in theory, if the infrastructure is there – and, most importantly, it is much lighter than glass. Plastic bottles also have the benefit of looking – often indistinguishably – like wine when placed on a shelf.

In 2022, UK-based packaging manufacturer Petainer launched 49g virgin-PET wine bottles, which are now available in Bordeaux and Burgundy shapes at 75cl and a one-litre Bordeaux bottle.

While plastic has for so long been the antithesis to all things sustainable, Petainer refillable bottle programme manager Michael Joyes says: “When you make the case around carbon footprint, people start to think a little bit differently.

“You’re going to get around a 70% carbon footprint saving with PET versus glass. It’s also very hard to decarbonise the glass-production process. PET has allowed companies to produce huge amounts at very low cost with a very low carbon footprint compared to glass or aluminium.”

Now (2024) the bottles form “a big chunk” of its Swedish factory’s output and have improved in quality compared to previous models, Petainer says. Marketing manager Jack Denley says the bottles are designed to protect wine from light damage and “give a very ‘glasslike finish’”, which makes the switch from glass “easy”.

“Other bottles that are made from alternative materials, or in different shapes are asking customers to make too many shifts to their buying behaviour,” he says.

As well as the classic bottle shape, flat bottles – such as Australia- and UK-based manufacturer Packamama – are growing in popularity, albeit from a small base…..

Read the full story here: Global Data