Materials features: glass bottles

Rodney Abbott , Packaging News, 01 November 2006

 

In recent years, glass has progressed from simple forms to provide the marketer with a brilliant array of colours, shapes and finishes to help grab the consumer’s attention.

 

Henry Ford once said that the customer could have any colour he wanted so long as it was black. Not so long ago the same applied to glass. Black wasn’t available, just flint, green and brown. Today, the colours available, including black, would complement any artist’s palette.

 

A bottle’s image can also be enhanced by myriad different finishes. Shape and decorative methods such as embossing, sleeving, pressure sensitive labelling, coating and screenprinting can be used separately or in combination to create tailored branding solutions.

 

No matter how well glass is perceived by consumers, its protagonists cannot afford to sit on their laurels.

 

A fifth gear has to be found. Allied Glass Containers found that fifth gear with Diageo’s Sambão mid-proof cachaca spirit bottle.

 

 

Sambão was winner of the Glass Packaging Award at the inaugural UK Packaging Awards in September.

The lime wedge design made this pack the outright winner since it was considered to stretch technical boundaries through the application of off-set mould seams to achieve a multi-curved panel together with debossed label panels and an embossed crest. The innovative design was delivered at the optimum glass weight for this shape of container.

 

 

Designers at Rockware Glass have recently been shedding more light on embossing, which often provides the most tangible expression of the brand as well as an impression of premium quality. To create maximum impact, embossing is often located around the shoulder of the container, which also happens to be the trickiest area to work on.

 

Accurate embossing

Traditionally, to create an embossed bottle, the glass designer supplies the mould maker with 2D artwork which is used to produce the finished mould. But even the most precise of the traditional techniques could fail to replicate the original artist’s impression. Poorly machined moulds mean that the glass produced often contains slight imperfections on the embossing. New moulds have to be made and production repeated, incurring additional costs and delays.

 

In their search for a solution that would satisfy their customers and production colleagues, Rockware’s CAD systems technologist Brian Howard and senior designer Steve Glover came up with a desktop rapid prototyping system.

 

 

“The results exceeded our expectations,” says design department section leader Tony Baker. “By creating a 3D model and capturing all the data of the container and specifically the embossing detail, our mould manufacturer can produce an exact and fault-free mould that will form a clean, crisp and clear relief onto the shoulder of the container.”

 

 

The power of design was demonstrated by Rockware’s innovation and new product development manager Chris Todd in a ‘one-off’ project for F Duerrs and Sons. Rockware set about creating an elegant-looking jar that would contain the world’s most expensive marmalade to celebrate 125 years of prize-winning marmalade manufacture.

 

 

The result is a crystal glass decanter. A glass bowl with a silver stopper sits in a solid glass base. The bowl and base were hand made by skilled glassblowers at the Dial Glassworks in Stourbridge.

 

 

Silversmiths crafted the silver lid and lid housing on the top of the decanter, and the finishing touches were added by hand engraving.

 

 

To take advantage of these recent developments, Britvic has re-launched its Amé carbonated adult fruit drink in a one-litre embossed bottle produced by Rockware Glass and designed by Jones Knowles Ritchie.

The Amé redesign reflects the brand’s repositioning as a mainstream adult soft drink. The tie device from Amé’s previous labels has been re-created as a piece of delicate glass embossing at the waist of the bottle. Paper labels have been replaced with clear pressure-sensitive labelling.

 

 

The new bottle and labels strongly communicate the product’s offering in the adult soft drinks sector. An increase in serving size from 750cl to one-litre creates a real sharing proposition to match wines or beers. Permanent shelf-ready packaging increases the shelf visibility.

 

 

Recently, O-I has been producing more than just glass packaging at the Rinteln and Holzminden specialty plants in Germany. The latest bottle designs are examples of how a glass package can serve more than just a functional purpose.

 

 

The Rinteln plant recently produced a glass award for the North Sea Tourism Association. The ‘Blue Seal’ bottle was created as the association’s new symbol and was presented as this year’s North Sea Tourism Award.

 

 

“The seal stands for environmental protection and the royal blue colour stands for the purity of the North Sea water,” explains director of specialties glass, Europe Dr Thomas Koy.

 

Specialist applications

Another example of glass’ functionality was recently developed at the Holzminden plant, where production designers created a bottle shaped like a boar.

 

 

“This project proposed a challenge as the many details of the crest needed to be incorporated into the shape of a bottle,” says Koy. “To provide the most finely detailed bottle, the first model was crafted from gypsum and then a mould was created.”

 

Returning to the beverage market, aptly named Foster’s Twist lager is packed in a twisted-neck clear glass bottle by O-I for Scottish & Newcastle. The brand extension is aimed at beer drinkers in their 20s and the design is intended to reflect this.

 

 

Glass marking continues to fuel the expansion of the CO2 laser market. Although most glass marking is centred on automotive, commercial, industrial, and residential window glass, there are also many applications for marking glass bottles and other decorative consumer items.

 

 

To test the feasibility of marking perfume bottles, Laser Lines recently set-up a Synrad sealed CO2 laser to mark 73 characters on a concave glass surface in a cycle time of 0.54s per bottle.

 

 

Using WinMark Pro, 10 different stroke text objects were created spanning seven lines of text comprising 73 characters – all in a space measuring 9.91mm wide by 8.45mm high. Individual text height values ranged from 1-2mm high and, in some cases, 0.1mm of extra character spacing was added.

 

The less glamorous sectors of glass container production are often starved of media attention, but glass used in the pharmaceutical industry deserves a second look.

 

 

The pharmaceutical industry is driven by global players and blue-chip brands. Beatson Clark sales and marketing director Lynn Sidebottom speaks of the company’s long standing relationship with Reckitt Benckiser; Beatson Clark is the sole supplier of glass containers for its Gaviscon range, and supplies bottles for other brands including Senokot and Lemsip.

 

 

“Following the installation of a bulk depalletiser at Reckitt Benckiser to improve line efficiency, we adapted all our pack sizes to make our packs compatible with the company’s new equipment,” she says.

“On the logistics front we have exploited the concept of ‘just in time’ delivery. Reckitt Benckiser holds no stock. The company tells us its requirements on a daily basis and we ensure the correct containers are delivered to the filling line within 24 hours.”

 

Beatson Clark recently designed an innovative sleeved bottle for the launch of a new product in Reckitt Benckiser’s key Gaviscon range – Double Action Liquid. The existing 150ml and 300ml Gaviscon bottles have been re-branded with the application of an eye-catching full sleeve.

 

 

The fully sleeved bottle differentiates the Double Action Liquid from the rest of the range and creates greater standout appeal on supermarket shelves. It also has the added benefit for the customer of speeding up the filling process because the bottles are sleeved in advance so no on-line labelling is required.

 

 

Similarly, Johnsen & Jorgensen (J&J) has re-designed a bottle for a successful range of health food oils. The customer wanted a new, shorter bottle shape with the same volume as its predecessor that would also fit on the eye-level shelves of a major supermarket chain.

 

 

Previously, the products had been top-shelf items, which placed no constraints on bottle height.

J&J designed the ‘Cylindrica Bassa’ 250ml bottle, which has the same generic appearance of other sizes in the branded range. The squat but elegant bottles are an example of packaging design that could make all the difference to a brand.

 

 

“Commercially, the new bottle shape fits perfectly on the supermarket’s best-selling shelves,” says J&J speciality division sales manager Mike Bogod. It just goes to show what benefits glass has to offer.

 

 

How glass is made

Recycled glass plus sand, soda ash, limestone and other ingredients are heated to very high temperatures (around 1,500-1,700°C) in a glass furnace. As much recycled glass is used as possible as this enables the other materials to melt at lower temperatures.

 

 

Even though basic ingredients are used in vast quantities, accurate weighing and mixing is essential to the manufacturing process. This is carried out and measured electronically in a batch house, which supplies the mix to the furnace.

 

 

The individual materials melt and fuse to create molten glass, which flows into moulds where it is automatically pressed into shape by plungers and blown by compressed air to make the finished container.

 

 

This continuous flow of glass is now cut into individual gobs (globules of molten glass) by being forced past synchronised shears that cut gobs of glass of the same weight as the eventual container. The gob is then fired down into a section of the forming machine. Within seconds it emerges as a recognisable container.

 

 

After leaving the forming machine, and before entering the lehr, the containers are given a ‘hot end’ coating that helps to maintain the strength of the containers through their working life.

 

 

The lehr is a long oven which ‘anneals’ the glass by raising its temperature to around 550°C and then cooling it down at a gradual rate. This process removes any residual stresses that have been created in the container by its rapid forming and cooling.

 

 

A second surface treatment at the ‘cold end’, after the lehr, is applied to the containers. This increases the lubricity of the glass to prevent scratching and improve its performance down filling lines.