GlassRite: Food, Soft Drinks and RTD - Project Progress
The project aims to make an annual glass saving of 20,000 tonnes by March 2008 across the food, soft drink and ready to drink (RTD) sectors. This is being achieved through a comprehensive lightweighting programme covering a diverse range of products including cooking sauces, mineral water and olive oils.
Through lightweighting this project can help you deliver:
- reduced transportation costs
- less raw materials
- carbon reductions
- cost reductions
- meeting customer expectations.
Read on to find out how Coca Cola, Mars and A E Chapman are already delivering these benefits.
Current activity
So far the project has resulted in glass savings of over 6,000 tonnes from a variety of product categories. Commenting on the progress to date the project’s manager at Faraday Packaging Mark Richmond said, “The hard work invested by our project partners has allowed us to make progress towards the project target. Raising the awareness of the project, combined with the impact of recent recruitment efforts have led to an increase in lightweighting trials as part of the project, and these will build upon the savings achieved to date.”
Iconic contour Coca-Cola glass bottle sheds tonnes of weight
Coca-Cola Enterprises Ltd (CCE) has reduced the weight of its iconic 330ml ‘Coca-Cola’ glass contour bottle by 20%, which will lead to savings of over 3,500 tonnes of glass raw material and an estimated 2,200 tonnes of CO2 per year – equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of 365 UK households, assuming 50% recycled content is used. All new glass bottles of 330ml ‘Coca-Cola’, diet ‘Coke’ and ‘Coca-Cola’ Zero are now being made to the new specifications, known as the ‘Ultra’ design. The new bottle weighs 20% less, having been reduced from 263g to 210g and, in order to maintain its trademark dimensions, is 0.1mm wider and 13mm shorter than the original.
Uncle Ben’s loses weight
Collaboration between Mars and Ardagh Glass within the GlassRite: Food, Soft Drinks and RTD project has led to a reduction of 6% in the weight of Uncle Ben’s ambient cooking sauces. This will amount to a saving of 450 tonnes of glass per annum.
Frieda Sporen, Mars’ packaging innovations manager, said: “This project, which saw close co-operation between our factory and our glass manufacturer, managed to reduce the weight of the jar from 258g to 243g. The new jar, to the right of the original is now 6% lighter. Crucially, the new jar can be manufactured smoothly on our existing production lines.” Mars' recent achievement with its Uncle Ben’s sauce jar follows similar success in the rightweighting of the 500g Dolmio sauce jar last year.
Chapman’s delivers 1,800 tonnes on mineral water range
A E Chapman & Son has undertaken work to lightweight a range of mineral water bottles within their portfolio. The bottles, which are designed by Chapman’s and manufactured by O-I, have provided annual tonnage savings in excess of 1,750 tonnes of glass. Differences in the profiles of the lightweighted and previous designs are negligible which significantly reduces the possibilities of filling line issues. Commenting on the work undertaken, Director André Chapman stated, “Lightweighting will provide our customers with a number of benefits. The reduction in tonnage is not only pleasing in respect to raw material savings and production carbon output, but also in other logistics and costs. ”
Research
Filling line modelling
Glass manufacturers have identified filling line compatibility as a constraint on designing containers at their optimum weight. Agent QC is a solution provided by Canadian based Sensor Wireless which uses a resin mould that replicates a container, but is fitted with shock logging sensors to measure impacts along the line. This information is relayed to hand held devices and can then be uploaded into a spreadsheet. The resulting data can be used to identify how line impacts could be reduced through equipment modification, as well as informing designers on the minimum specifications required during design. Mark Richmond, the project’s manager said, “Applying the Agent QC solution to a number of trials has allowed for significant glass savings to be identified throughout the food and beverage sector. Project partners who have used the technology have indicated that numerical data from filling lines has been a powerful tool in the design of lighter containers”.
Consumer perception
A major programme of consumer perception research has been commissioned for with the Department of Psychology at the University of Wales, Bangor. The research, examines a consumers ability to detect lightweighted glass containers, as well as assess preferences and quality perceptions. The research should be commenced available in early 2008 and will be valuable to understand how much lighter glass containers can go.
