Garçon Wines (Delivering Happiness Ltd.) has come up with a bottle we’re convinced is going to change the bev/al world – and probably a lot of other industries as well.
It’s a flat, 750ml plastic bottle made from pre-existing, food-grade, 100% recycled single-use plastic. The bottle is “remarkably more cost-effective, eco-friendly, and consumer pleasing for delivery, retailing, and the supply chain,” the company says.
One reason it’s more cost-efficient: it’s 87% lighter, saving more than 500 grams of CO2 across the supply chain. Its flat shape is 40% smaller, and packs light books, slashing storage space needed.
“Strong shoulders and the same proportions that conform to the Bordeaux bottle design, the most popular wine bottle shape and one that consumers know and like, respects the heritage and tradition of the wine industry,” the company says.
Indeed, more than twice as many bottles can fit on a pallet, increasing the efficiency of wine transportation and slashing carbon emissions and accosts across the supply chain.
Plus: “Producing a bottle from PET requires 8.4x less energy than producing the same container in glass,” the company says, adding: “Ours are produced in a factory with 7000 solar panels producing 1GW/h energy per year. For comparison, a glass bottle would have to be reused 20 times before it matches the energy used to recycle a PET bottle once.”
Using the eco bottles and 10 flat bottle case results in lower costs in warehouse handling and storage because 2.3 times more wine can be stored in the same area, Garcon says, adding that “based on an example consignment of 50,000 units packed in our 10 flat bottle cases, logistics costs are slashed by 60% through reducing the number of HGVs required to transport the same volume of product from 5 to 2.
“PET bottles also require significantly less energy to produce and therefore at scale, are considerably more cost-effective to produce than glass,” the company says.
In the UK, the wine bottle and cardboard container can fit through an average UK letterbox.
We believe Garcon’s flat bottle will be adapted for use in a number of other commodity lines. Essentially, it is probably a better solution anywhere round bottles are used.