Co-op moves own-brand vodka to PET bottle

Liz Wells, packagingnews.co.uk, 04 March 2009

 

The Co-operative Group is switching its own-brand 35cl vodka from a glass bottle to PET to reduce its impact on the environment.

 

The Co-operative Special Dry Imperial Vodka 35cl will be re-packaged into a PET bottle from next week. The current glass bottle weighs 265g, while the PET bottle weighs 40g – an 85% weight reduction.

 

The change will result in an annual saving of 270 tonnes of glass, will reduce the energy needed to transport the bottles and provide a safer alternative to glass. There will also be a significant CO2 saving of around 69 tonnes.

 

The 35cl PET bottle has been produced by Artenius PET Packaging and was designed to replicate the glass bottle it replaces. 

 

The technical team at Artenius was tasked with creating a bottle with proportionate height and width to maximise on-shelf presence and enable The Co-operative to retain a similar size label, which ensures that all the required legal information can be easily incorporated.

 

The bottle is single stage stretch blow moulded on a Nissei machine. The 30mm ROPP extra deep neck finish uses the same screw cap as the glass bottle. 

 

The company said virgin PET was selected because it offered excellent clarity, which matched the purity of the vodka and projected a premium image for the spirit, bottled by Kingsland Wines and Spirits.

 

Vicky Wood, category marketing manager for beverages at The Co-operative, said: "If the introduction of the 35cl plastic vodka bottle is successful, we will look to rolling PET packaging out to other 35cl spirit bottles, as well as extending it to other sizes."

 

The initiative follows the launch of The Co-operative's Food Ethical Policy in 2007, based on the world's largest consumer poll on ethics. More than 100,000 members and customers said action to safeguard the environment was one of their top priorities and 97% endorsed The Co-operative's aim to reduce waste and increase recycling.  

 

As a result of the poll, The Co-operative announced that it was dramatically reducing the weight of its own-brand wine bottles, having already introduced the world's lightest whisky bottle in 2007. 

 

The retailer also lightweighted the glass for its own-brand ales range in summer 2008.