Science engineer Tim Silbermann is on track to produce 20 million fully recyclable paper beer bottles a year from a new high-tech production plant near Copenhagen.
As the new CEO of Denmark’s Paper Bottle Co. (Paboco), his early customers include well-known brands such as Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola Co., Danish brewer Carlsberg, spirits maker Absolut Vodka, and cosmetics maker L’Oréal.
“Once the commercial-scale plant in Denmark is humming, it will essentially be a ‘copy-and-paste’ exercise to duplicate that production capacity in a new location, maybe in another European country,” German-born Dr Silbermann, 33, said.
“This product, this story, this vision is very dear to my heart,” he said.
“The challenge for all paper bottle makers is to create an aesthetically pleasing and structurally stable container that provides the performance properties necessary for moisture and vapour barrier protection – all while being eco-friendly and not disrupting existing recycling streams.
“We want to vastly reduce the consumption of fossil-based, single-use plastics and replace them with fully bio-based and recyclable paper bottles.
“We are also targeting the beauty and fabric and home-care segment, but continuous development will enable us to bring our next-generation bottle into further applications, such as beverages.”
The new research prototypes are made from sustainably sourced certified wood fibre, are fully recyclable, and have an inner barrier that allows the bottles to contain beer.
The prototypes use a thin recycled polymer film barrier or a 100% bio-based polymer film barrier.
Myriam Shingleton, vice president of product development at Carlsberg, said the prototypes were an important step towards the group’s ultimate ambition of bringing the breakthrough to market.
“Innovation takes time, and we will continue collaborating with leading experts to overcome remaining technical challenges, just as we did with our plastic products,” she said.
Carlsberg kicked off the project to develop a bottle made from sustainable wood fibres with the ‘green fibre bottle’ in 2015, working alongside innovation experts and post-doctoral researchers at the Danish Technical University.
Ms Shingleton added: “Our constant pursuit drives us to create more sustainable packaging solutions that help people live more sustainably. Sometimes that means completely rethinking how things are done, pushing the boundaries of existing technologies and overcoming technical challenges as they present themselves.”
Meanwhile, working with global packaging company Frugalpac, Italian alt-wine producer When in Rome has launched the first paper wine bottle.
“Eco-packaging is a growing trend,” says CEO Rob Mallin. “It’s increasingly inexcusable that over 95% of wine in the UK is sold in single-use glass bottles at a huge cost above Co2 emissions, Mallin said.
“That is why we partnered with Frugalpac to make more visually palatable alt-wine packaging.
The paper wine bottle creates six times less CO2 than a wine bottle made of glass and cuts the carbon footprint by 84%. “This is because the fibre wine bottle is five times lighter than its glass bottle counterpart.”
