in PET bottles: will plastic replace glass?
Alternative packaging for
wine is nothing new. Indeed, glass bottles themselves are a relatively
recent innovation in the history of wine, dating back to the 18th
century. Prior to this wine was transported in bulk, and sold from
barrel or clay amphora, moving to more temporary storage media at
destination, such as the wineskin. It’s worth bearing in mind that
much today’s wine still never sees a bottle, but is drunk close to
The introduction of glass as
a storage medium changed wine as we know it: while the notion of
ageing wine is not a new one (old Falernian of Rome springs to mind),
bottles sealed with corks made it possible for the current fine wine
scene to develop.
In recent years, moves have
been made to replace glass, which while being excellent at protecting
wine from the ingress of oxygen, is heavy and has a tendency to break.
There has been a shift to bag-in-box for cheaper wines, as well as
more radical options such as Tetrapak and cans.
But the latest
development—and one making headlines in the UK at the moment—is
the appearance of 75 cl (standard sized) PET bottles on supermarket
shelves. Two wines, a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and an Australian
Shiraz Rosé (pictured above) have been launched by UK
supermarket Sainsbury’s in PET. Later this year Aussie producer Wolf
Blass will be launching two of its Green Label wines in PET.
Why is this so newsworthy?
Well, there are two main reasons. PET, a plastic which has the more
formal name of polyethylene teraphthalate, has been used for wine
before, most commonly with small 25 cl bottles, and also with 1.5
litre bottles of plonk from the south of France. But this is the first
time that wine in standard sized 75 cl bottles has been presented in
plastic on supermarket shelves.
The second reason it is
newsworthy is because of the current interest in reducing carbon
dioxide emissions: this project has been supported by WRAP (Waste
Resources and Action Programme), a government-sponsored initiative.
It’s likely we’ll see more of these plastic wine bottles on
supermarket shelves: even if consumers take a while to get used to
them, the major supermarkets are all talking very seriously about
reducing carbon footprints of the products on their shelves, and with
published commitments to reducing emissions, they’ll be the drivers
of such change—perhaps even ahead of consumer preferences. [Of
course, their hope and expectation is that consumers will welcome
So what are the advantages
and disadvantages of PET wine bottles?
Weight. A 75 cl glass bottle
weighs around 400 g; the same size in PET weighs 54 g, one-eighth
of the weight. This makes transport more efficient.
Robustness. PET bottles
don’t break, which makes them safer and easier to transport.
Size. PET bottles are
considerably smaller, so you get more of them in the same storage
space during transport.
Recyclable. Sainsbury claim
that 92% of local councils have facilities for recycling PET. But
question marks remain about the ‘real world’ recyclability of
The main driving force
behind the adoption of PET is an environmental one, and it has to do
with the weight of the bottles, which reduces their carbon footprint
through savings in the transport chain. The UK consumes around 1
billion bottles of wine each year, and estimates are that reducing the
bottles for all these to the lightest available would save around 90
000 tons of CO2. If this is coupled to bottling in the UK,
with bulk shipment of the wine, then the savings are magnified because
around twice the volume of wine can be shipped in bulk per container.
More on this later.
Wine quality. PET allows
more oxygen ingress than glass, and thus the wine has a shorter
shelf-life, losing freshness more quickly.
Health implications. Whether
or not there are problems related to keeping wine in plastic is a
controversial area, which I’ll explore below.
Image. Plastics have an
increasingly negative image in the eyes of consumers: convincing
them that plastic is the environmentally friendly option will be
difficult, and it will be hard to get away from the cheap
‘look’ that plastic bottles have.
Let’s look into the
technical issues in more detail. Sainsbury’s two PET wines are
shipped in bulk and then bottled in the UK at Corby, in
Bottling in the UK of bulk-shipped wine is increasingly common: where
this happens, you’ll see an acknowledgement in small print on the
label, usually with just the postcode. Usually, the wine is shipped in
25 000 litre flexitanks, and there is some potential for quality loss
during shipping due to oxygen ingress.
The PET bottle itself is
also potentially problematic. As with all plastics, PET allows
diffusion of oxygen. To counter this, barrier technologies and oxygen
scavengers are incorporated into the PET construction. The
Sainsbury’s bottles are manufactured by Amcor PET Packaging UK (here),
with the barrier under licence from Constar (here).
Barrier technologies lose their effectiveness at higher temperatures,
which is one of the reasons that it’s inadvisable to ship PET
bottles over long distances. How effective PET is in protecting wine
quality remains to be seen: my guess would be that PET bottles are
suitable for wines that aren’t going to spend too long on retailers
shelves, much like Bag-in-Box.
One thorny issue that needs
addressing here is one of health. There is some discussion of whether
alcoholic beverages stored in PET leach phthalates out of the plastic.
However, the phthalates discussed in connection with health, which are
used as plasticizers and additives to certain plastics and which can
act as endocrine disruptors (they mess hormone signalling up), are not
the same chemical form as the ‘phthalate’ in PET (see here)
for an explanation. PET, it seems, is pretty much safe.
image needs to be considered. These bottles have a bit of a low-rent
image, and I can't see consumers switching to them for expensive
wines. It will also be hard convincing consumers that plastic is the
environmentally sound option. If I was a wine producer I wouldn't use
PET for my existing brands, but develop new brands where the
alternative packaging is part of the story.
PET replace glass? It's too soon to say. The trade is watching
intently to see how the first few products in this new packaging
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