Accolade launches flat wine bottle

Accolade Wine’s wine brand Banrock Station has rolled out its first flat PET bottle into the supermarket after collaborating with green packaging company Garçon Wines.

A Banrock Station Merlot has already gone on shelf in the Co-op (RRP: £7.50) with a Chardonnay set to follow before the end of the year.

The 75cl flat bottles, are made from 100% recycled PET polymer from pre-existing material rather than single-use plastic and are 100% recyclable. They are 87% lighter than the average UK glass bottle, and the flat design takes up 40% less space, enabling nearly twice as many (91%) to fit on one pallet, which reduces the carbon emissions across the supply chain.

According to Garcon Wines, it takes 75% less energy to make a plastic bottle from recycled material compared with using virgin material, lowering the CO2 emissions by around 79%.

The bottles are packaged at Accolade Park, the company’s giant bottling facility in Bristol Avonmouth.

Amelia Dales, Commercial Director at Garçon Wines said the eco-friendly brand was a natural fit with the company’s ethos and followed the launch of a number of successful Accolade brand launches in its bottles in the Nordics.

“This launch is a key milestone for our young company and an exciting stage of our multi-brand, -channel, and -country strategy,” she said.

Lindsay Holas, Brand Manager at Accolade Wines, said the company prided itself on its  environmental ethos and wanted to “galvanise consumers to ‘do good’ for themselves and our planet”, as well as supporting retailers to meet the demand for green products.

“We know that 62% of customers say they want to buy from sustainable brands and 37% of global consumers are influenced by ethical credentials when purchasing alcohol,” she said .“The move to using these flat wine bottles is a big step in Accolade Wines’ environmental journey as we manage our business in a responsible manner from vineyard to the consumer. This will also allow Banrock Station and retailers to target younger consumers, who on the whole are more aware and concerned for the future of the planet. We’re pleased to collaborate with Garçon Wines and the Co-op to bring this exciting technology to market, benefitting both retailers and consumers.”

Last year, Garçon Wines, which claims to be the first wine packaging solution capable of being posted through a letterbox, partnered with online wine merchant Naked Wines. The company was set up in 2017, and later launched a new multi-pack ten-pack wine case for its flat bottles, which was 55% smaller than the standard secondary packaging 6-bottle case used across the industry.