A lighter wine bottle, intended to cut costs for producers and shippers and to reduce environmental impact, is set to hit the market next year, the Alentejo Regional Wine Commission (CRVA) announced.
The “Garrafa Leve do Alentejo” is a 390-gram glass bottle developed by CVRA in partnership with Verallia’s Portuguese subsidiary and with regional producers.
The project used as reference the maximum weight of 420 grams that retailers and global wine producers signatories to the Round Table on Sustainable Wine Bottle Weight Agreement determined as desirable for a 750-milliliter glass bottle of wine, compared with the current average of 550 grams.
“It is a guarantee that supermarkets look for and even lower, therefore it is a commercial argument that is an advantage,” said to the Lusa agency the president of CVRA, Luís Sequeira, during a presentation event in London.
The official added that “the novelty is that it is a region that assumes this objective,” seeking scale effects difficult to achieve by a single producer and that could particularly benefit small winegrowers.
The new packaging was designed to be compatible with high-throughput bottling lines, i.e., with more than 10,000 bottles per hour, allowing savings in the consumption of raw materials and energy, as well as in greenhouse gas emissions.
If the annual target of 50 million bottles is reached, this measure could save, per year, about 1.5 tons of glass and 1.2 tons in the carbon footprint, estimates CVRA.
A market study indicated that the majority of respondents (72%) do not associate bottle weight with quality, a “myth” in the industry.
However, the Sustainability Coordinator of CVRA, João Barroso, stated that a lighter model, of 310 grams, was rejected by producers for being too low, a feature associated with lower-quality wine.
The Production and Quality Director of Adega de Borba, Helena Ferreira, revealed that the cooperative already uses lighter bottles and that the reduced weight “was an important point” to win a contract with the Lidl supermarket in the United Kingdom.
“The most important thing in this project was to have a commercial bottle that works with distribution. This bottle is the balance between both—a lighter bottle, but marketable,” he emphasized.
Tests to assess the bottles’ resistance in long logistics channels, notably the risk of breakage, will begin in the first quarter of next year.
The idea of the “Garrafa Leve do Alentejo” is part of the Sustainability Program for Alentejo Wines, whose members recorded, on average, a reduction of up to 30% in water consumption and 20% in energy consumption over the last five years.
Last year, CVRA launched another initiative, the ‘Re:Boxed’, a transport box made from recycled wine-label strips, in partnership with the company Partícula Verde.
In the future, the aim is the end of using protective foil capsules for the cork, with the inscription “Vinhos do Alentejo” embossed on the neck just below the mouth—visible only without the capsule.
Although some markets show resistance, Luís Sequeira stressed that “things are changing very quickly.”
“CVRA has the obligation to keep giving hints, which, later, economic agents may or may not follow, in the sense of saying: this is the path we think we can take,” he said.
