The Sustainable Wine Roundtable (SWR) has announced the launch of its Sparkling Bottle Weight Accord (SBWA), which commits businesses to cut average bottle weights across their portfolios.
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Taylor's Port has introduced a redesigned bottle as part of a major sustainability drive - a vessel that is 24% lighter than its predecessor.
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The UK’s first British-made sparkling wine bottle, a collaboration between packaging firm Croxsons and glass manufacturer Encirc, has completed its first production run with nearly a million bottles produced.
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British paper bottle company Frugalpac has announced the release of the Frugal Bottle Assembly Machine 2 (FBAM-2), which significantly increases the speed of its bottle production.
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Croxsons, a B-Corp certified firm that supplies glass packaging for the food and drink sector, has launched a lightweight glass packaging solution, Rightweight®.
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UK glass bottle manufacturer Croxsons has announced a new British sparkling wine bottle designed for English and Welsh producers.
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Given that it’s been in use for wine consumption since about 1500BC, glassware has had plenty of time to evolve, and today’s manufacturers have the restaurant world spoilt for choice when it comes to sizes, shapes and colours. But how far are today’s top sommeliers prepared to go outside the traditionally accepted vessels when it comes to providing the best experience for diners in their food-matching choices – and what do diners expect?
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The European glass packaging producer Verallia has launched the Burgundy Air 300G, an ultra-light Burgundy bottle.
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At 1.2kg, the bottle on the table was heavy enough for it to be hard to tell how much wine was in it. But as chief winemaker Ana María Cumsille explained, the biggest market for Viña Carmen Gold, the Chilean producer’s top cuvée, was China, and consumers there “associate weight with quality”. A few weeks later I related this story to a manager at Ardagh glass in Barnsley as I toured their bottle factory. He joked: “We could get three out of one of those!” – and indeed the bottles coming off the production line in front of us weighed just 400g or less.
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Today (1 October) marks the commencement of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) levy. It also marks the deadline for which ‘large producers’ under the scheme must report their packaging data for the first half of 2025.
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The glass bottle has been a fixture of the wine world since the 17th century, while the earliest examples date back to the Roman era. Impermeable and inert, it remains the universal vessel of choice, but a growing consumer awareness of its carbon footprint could yet threaten that status, meaning its days would be numbered. Estimates vary, but glass production accounts for up to half the CO2 in a typical bottle of wine. The material is energy intensive, with gas used to heat furnaces to 1,700ºC for its manufacture. Then there’s the impact of shipping as bottles, many of them needlessly heavy, are hauled across the world, with the IWCA (International Wineries for Climate Action) estimating that transport accounts for 15.9% of the average winery’s emissions. Theoretically, glass has an infinite life – the UK boasting one of the better recycling rates at 74.2%, according to British Glass – but the process is notoriously complex, requiring rigorous colour sorting, and it uses energy.
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Aldi’s latest move to segue alternative formats into the mainstream is here – this time via the launch of an aluminium bottle.
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The Australian wine giant is among three new signatories to the scheme, as well as South African winery Botanica Wines and Albert Heijin, the Netherland’s largest supermarket group.
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James Lawrence peers into the growing debate surrounding glass bottle usage in an environmentally challenged age.
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Wales will press ahead with its own Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) as the devolved government announced its intention to back out of a UK-wide framework which is looking to exclude glass.
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Lanchester Wines has become the first UK wine importer to launch a wine in a super lightweight 300g wine bottle, in partnership with a major discounter.
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Research into a bottle reuse initiative launched during last year’s London Wine Fair (LWF) has now concluded, with a Reuse Ready Charter now set to formalise an industry wide approach.
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The Wine Society is to further its sustainable credentials with both a producer-focused insetting fund and a drive to 100% lighter weight glass across its portfolio.
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The latest back and forth between the UK government and Scotland’s devolved powers has derailed plans for Scotland to include glass as part of a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), with glass now to be fully excluded both north and south of the border.
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Designing the best glass with which to serve a particular style of wine has long been the mission for the Riedel family, which has built a glass-blowing empire out of pinpointing the precise dimensions for higher end drinks receptacles. And having a bespoke vessel to deliver the best expression of your wine arguably suggests you have ‘arrived’, confirming a seat at the top table. A position English sparkling wine took a step closer to last week.
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