There's nothing quite like a glass of champagne to give you a lift, but does the bottle have to be quite so heavy? Not at all, according to Wrap and the glass industry, writes Des King

To qualify as a genuine bottle of bubbly, champagne has to be fermented and filled at source; a lengthy process extending from three to 15 or more years before it finds its way to market. The trademark fizz is achieved by ramping up pressurisation inside the container to around nine bar. To ensure that nothing goes pop until it's meant to, the glass industry has traditionally relied upon the ‘blow blow' forming process: the injection of nitrogen gas into both the blank and finishing moulds to blow the bottle.

Years of practice in perfecting the art have resulted in a weight of 900g for a 75cl bottle of Bolly et al - an industry standard that is now being seriously challenged by Wrap as the latest roll-out of recommendations via its packaging materials reduction GlassRite wine project.

In a new report titled ‘Examining the potential for glass lightweighting in the sparkling wine sector', Wrap contends that at least 100g could be clipped from each of the standard bottle formats currently being used for champagne and sparkling wine. The net benefit would be to remove 9,270 tonnes from the overall volume of 81,000 tonnes of glass consumed by the category, every year in the UK, a reduction in CO emissions of 7,231 tonnes, and a saving of £2.8m in material costs alone.

Ready to go
And that's just the aperitif, claims Wrap's drinks market key account manager Nicola Jenkin. "We've identified perfectly adequate lighter than standard-weight bottles available in all of the key champagne and sparkling wine-producing countries. Brands could switch right now if they chose to.

"Furthermore, it's technically feasible to reduce bottle weight in the category by as much as 30%. The materials and carbon footprint reduction would amount to 25,000 and 19,500 tonnes respectively, and triple the glass cost savings," she says.

Laudable and meticulously researched though the Wrap report undoubtedly is, the glass manufacturing industry would argue, with quite some justification, that it's been shedding excess weight for a number of years. Not solely to provide a more sustainable solution, but to optimise the volume of units derived from a tonne of material.

In the table wine category, for example, Quinn, working in partnership with Tesco and packer-filler Kingsland Wines and Spirits is realising higher volume scale economies. Supported by its £300m investment in advanced narrow neck press and blow  production, Quinn is now making a 300g screw-cap bottle, claimed to be the lightest available worldwide.

The quid pro quo, however, is not quite so straightforward in the sparkling wine sector. Safety considerations may demand a higher than nine-bar specification to control long-term bottle pressure throughout the time to maturation, says O-I Europe's marketing segment manager for wines Benoit Villaret.

"While lighter bottles mean more can be made from the same amount of glass, this only brings benefits if the market responds to the glass industry's innovations by taking more containers. In a static market, the furnace is being pulled more slowly, which is expensive and less environmentally efficient," says Villaret.

That said, O-I has been trialling an 835g bottle with champagne makers for over two years - as light as it's safe to go, says Villaret - and supplies a 560g bottle for an Italian sparkling wine. "We talk about ‘right-weighting' because every wine has its own limitations in terms of bottle weights and styles."

Along with O-I and as the other major supplier to the category, Saint Gobain has also been assisting in a 10-year lightweighting research project with the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne (CIVC). CIVC's members export around 10% of their 300m annual output to the UK, with sales valued at £958m in 2007.

Saint Gobain's vice president of sustainable development and business communication Fabienne Grall is quick to point out that bottle weight cannot be viewed in isolation. "There's no technical difficulty in making a lightweight glass bottle. The issue is ensuring that any weight reduction doesn't negatively affect the perceived value of the product. There's no point in producing a packaging solution that consumers don't want. We're not selling glass for its own sake."

Further reductions
Not with quite the same global reach, although particularly strong in Germany, Ardagh Glass has already surpassed Wrap's targeted aspirations with a champagne bottle weighing in at 775g, and a sparkling wine bottle produced in the UK at 546g. According to head of group marketing Sharon Crayton, the company is ready to put a 400g bottle for sparkling wine on to the market once a brand signs off on it.

There has been wide-ranging approval for Wrap's focus on the sparkling wine category across the supply chain.

"If you reduce the weight and retain the speed and efficiency of production then you will reduce the costs of manufacturing; also energy usage and CO. It all should be good news," says British Glass director-general David Workman. He cautions, though, that such a move won't necessarily result in lower prices.

 "In principle, we support steps to encourage more lightweighting, for which there are good environmental and economic reasons - for a start, it can reduce freight and energy costs; that's sound commercial logic for businesses in our sector," says Wine and Spirits Trade Association head of communications Gavin Partington. "Of course, it's for brand owners to decide what is best for their products and customers."

While noting there's nothing new in the report, Saint Gobain's Grall has praise for Wrap in trying to make sustainability a global issue. "Instead of talking about lightweighting as an innovation - which it's not - it's talking about how we can make packaging correspond to expectations. Effecting a reduction extends across the entire life-cycle of the product; how it's transported, how it's produced. Packaging is just one part of all of that."

 "We're working as a brokerage,' says Wraps's Jenkin. "We've listened to what the industry perceives as barriers to change, and done the research to show what's possible and where lightweight solutions can be sourced. I think that's really powerful."

Wrap has raised its game in addressing an issue that is largely outside of local control, and thrown down the gauntlet on a world stage. The glass industry is ready to deliver - but only when the brands are in a receptive frame of mind.

SAINSBURY'S BASICS
Sainsbury's featured a sparkling wine under its Basics own-label over a two-year period from September 2007 that weighed 560g, almost 20% lighter than the category norm.

"If you're in store comparing one Cava against many others, would a customer notice a difference in weight of 100g or even more - I would say it would be almost imperceptible. But in terms of furthering reduction within the overall groceries category, then it most certainly would. Sales of our Basics sparkling wine were totally unaffected by the reduced bottle-weight. The important thing in all of this, however, is that we make change at the right pace for the customer, our product and packaging suppliers.

"When you change any format there's a migration period to go through. But at the end of the day: less material should mean less money spent on it."

POP EARTH
While it's taken champagne producers the better part of the past 10 years to deliberate the pros and cons of reducing the weight of the 300 million standard bottles that contain the region's annual output, one of its leading producers, Vranken-Pommery Monopole, has cracked on by introducing a champagne made under méthode champenoise conditions in a lighter 850g format.

With all of its UK sales via the on-trade, you won't be able to find Pop Earth at your nearest Tesco. And while it's primarily a promotional vehicle to reflect Pommery's green credentials, says Colin Cameron, commercial manager for distributors Percy Fox and Justerini & Brooks, it's nevertheless a genuine cuvée (70% pinot noir; 20% chardonnay and 10% pinot meunier) and the first demonstration of the shape of things to come.

Not only does the rest of the packaging reflect a use of sustainable resource in the form of recycled paper and water-based inks, but the grapes were also organically grown.

"As a modern champagne producer, Vranken-Pommery Monopole is very proactive and not set in traditional ways like many other producers in the 34,000-hectare appellation region," says Cameron. "Pop Earth is getting a good response because, at last, someone is actually addressing the issue rather than saying, we're French, and this is the way we do things."