Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but it's hard to deny that the winner of the 2011 Diamond Pentaward for prestige packaging won on its 'cut glass' aesthetic appeal.
What is perhaps more surprising is that the winner, a striking new bottle for the Swedish Ramlösa mineral water bottle, uses PET (polyethylene terephthalate) in a premium market where glass has traditionally been the bottling material of choice.
Italy's SIPA, represented in Oceania by HBM Plastics & Packaging Technologies, therefore was both surprised and overjoyed to be able to celebrate its involvement in producing the award winning bottles of Ramlösa (Carlsberg) mineral water.
The Carlsberg mineral water range is a popular premium Swedish drink that was previously sold in high quality heavy glass bottles.
Carlsberg was concerned that the glass bottles were expensive, difficult to handle and transport and not environmentally friendly.
The company commissioned NINE, a Swedish design company, to work on creating a PET bottle that would maintain the customer perception of a premium range of drinks.
The team at SIPA joined the project and worked on many prototypes over a year to find a functional design that could provide the sharp cuts and angles in PET but would give the appearance of a premium cut-glass look.
The technical experts at SIPA produced new renderings that met the marketing needs of Carlsberg and the functional requirements of the bottle. The result was a bottle that could be used for still, semi-sparkling and sparkling variants of the Ramlösa water range.
SIPA supplied a SFR 8 EVO Rotary Blow Moulding machine that is now used to produce the Ramlösa 330ml and 800ml bottles in-line with Carlsberg’s existing production line.
The SFR 8 EVO has eight cavities, a maximum speed of 17,600bph and guarantees optimum container quality, simple and flexible operation, high utilisation rates and low running costs.
“The successful launch of Ramlösa in a unique premium PET bottle has increased our customers by 16 per cent and has assisted us in reducing our carbon footprint on the product by a massive 65 per cent,” marketing director of Carlsberg, Paul Davies, says.
SIPA is known as a global supplier of stretch blow moulding machines for the production of PET bottles.
