Flat, Recycled PET Bottles look to Disrupt Wine Packaging

Packamama resets, rebrands after the pandemic and resumes its push into the U.S. market

Santiago Navarro has been reimagining the wine bottle for years. His ideal bottle is flat-pack, not round, and made of recycled PET, not glass. As such, it also is lightweight, space-saving, and much more environmentally friendly.

London-based Navarro started his own wine company, Garçon Wines, in the UK back in 2018 as a vehicle for introducing his first eco-flat rPET bottles that year. The concept attracted a lot of attention, including from some wine industry giants. That, he explained recently, prompted a change in strategy.

“We decided to pivot and offer just the packaging and leave the highly competitive wine supply to others.” That led to a collaboration with huge bottle molder Amcor and a February 2020 launch into the U.S. market. A month later, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the effort ground to a halt.

“This was arguably the worst time ever to launch an innovation into a traditional industry,” he noted. He decided to cut his losses and pause U.S. activities at the end of 2020.

But his American dream remained alive.

Leveraging novel packaging & sustainability

Navarro –– who is half Scottish and half Maltese –– and his team waited for the pandemic to largely pass. In March 2022 Garçon Wines stopped trading and the group rebranded its packaging-focused operations as Packamama. The company explained that the name was inspired by the revered Inca goddess Pachamama, as they planned to offer packaging that helps protect Mother Earth.

Packamama is focusing on building the traction of its eco-flat wine bottles with multiple, well-respected brands that plan to launch in the format in Europe, Australia, and the U.S. The company is based in both the UK and Australia, with offices in London, Sydney and Melbourne. Melbourne-based packager and recycler Visy Industries blow molds its bottles in Australia and Berry Global produces them in Europe, Navarro said.

On March 18, coinciding with Global Recycling Day, Packamama celebrated the announcement that discount grocer Aldi was launching the UK’s first, supermarket own-brand, flat, recycled PET wine bottles. Aldi said it would sell its Chapter & Verse Shiraz and Chapter & Verse Chardonnay in these 75 cl rPET bottles in its stores across the U.K.

Lightweight and logistically friendly

In addition to being made entirely from recycled PET, the new flat bottles weigh just 63 grams –– making them 87 percent lighter than a standard glass bottle, while being completely shatterproof. The compact design means 30 percent more bottles can be loaded onto pallets and transported to supermarket, greatly reducing carbon emissions in the supply chain. And losses from breakage are all but eliminated.

On its website, Packamama cites independent research noting that glass bottles are “the single largest contributor to a wine’s carbon footprint because of their weight in transport and the energy required to produce, move, and recycle them.”  Further, it claims, the CO₂ savings from switching from glass bottles to recycled PET bottles simply cannot be matched by lightweighting a glass bottle.

An additional benefit to these transparent, recyclable, food-safe, BPA-free bottles, says Packamama, is that they offer a wine shelf life of 19 to 21 months.

But what do consumers think?

The eco arguments are compelling, but will consumers accept their wine in plastic bottles? Packamama thinks so. For one, their packaging will appeal to those individuals who are concerned about being environmentally conscious. An October 2023 study looked at consumer sentiment about the most environmentally friendly wine containers, and some anecdotal consumer reviews have also given the flat bottles a strong thumbs up.

The British supermarket Tesco offers Banrock Station-brand merlot and chardonnay wine in Packamama bottles and an analysis of 84 customer reviews offered these conclusions:

“The reviews indicate that customers not only appreciate the taste and quality of the wines but also value Banrock Station’s commitment to sustainability through the use of recycled PET plastic bottles, as offered to the brand by Packamama. The flat bottle design is seen as a practical and eco-friendly choice, especially for those who enjoy outdoor activities and travel, and the bottle seems to be a unique selling point that resonates with consumers. The sentiment … suggests that Banrock Station’s eco-conscious approach and innovative packaging with Packamama bottles are resonating positively with consumers.”

Packamama in 2020 assessed some 1,000 social media posts about its eco-flat bottles and it revealed 70 percent positive sentiment (vs. 28 percent neutral and just 2 percent negative).

Flat rPET bottles for the eco-conscious

Surely, some will never consider anything other than a hefty glass bottle to house their precious wine but the overall market is huge and it won’t take a massive market share to make eco-flat recycled PET bottles a viable packaging option.

Packamama puts it this way: “The future is flat. We didn’t reinvent the wine bottle because we could. We did it because we had to. Why? Because climate crisis is the greatest existential threat we’re facing as a species and it impacts the wine industry more than most other industries. Change is needed. Our industry needs it. Our planet needs it. And your business needs it. Change is at the heart of what we do, and we believe that by working together, we can change all our futures for the better.”