jamie goode's wine blog: Tesco announce the world's lightest glass bottle: so what does it look like?

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Tesco announce the world's lightest glass bottle: so what does it look like?


This probably won't be terribly relevant to the majority of wines featured on this blog, but the UK's largest wine retailer Tesco have just announced a new 300 g glass bottle, the lightest yet.

It's the result of a project in collaboration with WRAP, Kingsland Wine and Spirits (the UK bottler Tesco use), and Quinn Glass.

“Tesco has one of the largest wine ranges of any retailer and a traditional 12 bottle case weighs about 6kg in glass alone, presenting a real opportunity for us to make a difference,’ says Andrew Gale, technical manager for beers wines and spirits at Tesco. 'We have committed to bottling all entry level New World wines in the new 300 g option.’

In order to maintain strength of this lightweight bottle, the shape of the bottle has been modified, with a greater slope on the shoulder. It is also a fraction shorter, but it does look very good, as you can see from the picture above.

Tesco already ship the majority of their own-label new world wines in bulk, and since starting bulk shipping in 2003 the amount packaged in the UK (Tesco do all their bottling at Kingsland), has risen to 10 million litres annually, encompassing 57 different SKUs. About 80% of these wines are shipped to Kingsland from the port by barge, which makes the process even more carbon efficient.

6 Comments:

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At 3:56 PM, Anonymous Ian S said...

Interestign comment about the shipping by barge. I recall a few years ago that there were more businesses looking to see if they could do this.

One of the earliest to move back to barges was in delivering beer to canalside pubs. It was claimed (and I can see the justification) that the beer arrived in better shape via barge, as the journey was much gentler on the beer in cask. Thus it needed less time to settle at the pub before being used and they reckoned tasted better anyway.

Good on the evil empire on both canal use, and the lighter bottle!

regards

Ian

 
At 6:54 PM, Blogger Chris Townend said...

I can't help thinking that it will be the suppliers who were instructed to produce a lighter bottle in order to keep their contract rather than a philanthropic gesture by the nation's biggest retailer which has resulted in this technological marvel.

Who paid the development costs and who will benefit from the saving in transport costs? I don't think it will be the hard-working supply chain.

I hope I can be proved wrong.

 
At 1:05 AM, Anonymous Roger Kerrison said...

Hi Jamie,

I hope it does become relevant to most of the wines in your blog, the concept of glass weight reduction really does have to transcend the quality paradigm - e.g. we're not putting our wine in lightweight glass, because lightweight glass is seen as the vessel for wine of a lesser quality. A circuitous arument.

Having undertaken carbon assessments for Tesco Finest glass is by far the largest contributor to the carbon footprint of a wine, but directly from manufacture and indirectly from the transportation of a package that in some cases can be heavier than the product it is storing.

I would like to have seen this project rolled out in the Finest range as well, rather than staying with the light is cheap paradism.

Best,

Roger

 
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